Chinese Toddler Hit-and-Run Victim Dies: Can China Heal?
The two-year-old Chinese girl Yue Yue who was hit by two cars in Guangdong province last week died early Friday morning. Doctors revealed that the toddler suffered from brain damage and died from severe organ failure.
For a week, we have spared no effort to save her, a Guangzhou Military Hospital told The Telegraph. The best army doctors that we have, have cared for her, but in the end her traumas were too great. We extend our condolences to her family.
The hospital went all out and made [the] utmost effort to save her. But ... her injuries were too severe and the treatment had no effect, hospital director Su Lei said at a news conference.
The double hit-and-run incident last week was a source of outrage both in China and abroad. The girl, real name Wang Yue, wandered away from her parents and into a hardware market, where she was hit by two vehicles. As she lay bleeding in the middle of the road, 18 people walked or drove by, completely ignoring the injured child.
Doctors said that if anyone had come to her aid earlier, Yue Yue could have survived.
The despicable scene was caught on surveillance video, and Chinese bloggers have flocked to the Internet to decry the actions of their countrymen.
Now people have become so selfish. So many people walked by but no one helped her because they didn't want to get into trouble, Yang Yaying, a 21-year-old Beijing resident, told Reuters.
I hope that this little angel who was discarded by society can act as a wake-up call to the nation about the importance of moral education, wrote blogger gongzai xiaoben.
Chinese authorities have arrested the two drivers that hit the girl, but China has a larger morality issue to address. The country's rapid economic growth has spawned a number of social questions. The death of the toddler in Guangzhou illuminates a new moral uncertainty, which is exacerbated by the apparent lack of good Samaritans.
Many Chinese don't want to help in these situations, for fear they will be blamed. In Nanjing in 2006, a motorist was found guilty of hitting an elderly woman with his car. In reality, the driver was simply the first person to help the woman, who had fallen in the road, but a judge ruled that he wouldn't have helped if he hadn't hit her first, according to the Los Angeles Times.
We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet, provincial Communist Party chief, Wang Yang told Xinhua. Take active and effective steps to raise the moral standards of the entire society.
Although unrelated to Wang Yue, China's economic boom and rapid social changes are thought to have had a psychological effect on some citizens. Recent violent and public murders have also shocked the Chinese people.
In September, a farmer killed six people, including two young students and four adults, outside of a kindergarten classroom in the city of Congyi in Henan province. In August, eight children were injured when a female day-care employee slashed them with a box cutter. In 2010, 15 children were murdered and more than 80 wounded in five separate school attacks, including one in which a doctor stabbed eight children to death in Ninping.
A similar kindergarten axe attack occurred in May 2010, in the city of Hanzhong. Seven children and two adults died.
Most of the assailants were mentally unstable. A study published in Lancet in 2009 showed that around 17 percent of adults in China (173 million people) suffer from either permanent or temporary mental disorder, with a particular prevalence of schizophrenia.
Yet, despite the figures, very few seek or receive treatment, and outside critics are blaming the attacks on China's recent focus on economic growth and disregard for social problems.
Despite that, a recent poll indicated that only three percent of Chinese respondents would probably stay away from the trouble if they had walked by Wang Yue, while the majority said they would help.
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