论文部分内容阅读
Wang Yue, a 2-year-old girl who was injured in a hit-and-run accident and ignored by numerous passers-by in Foshan in south China’s Guangdong Province, died in hospital on October 21.
Her death triggered a nationwide wave of mourning, as her case caught the attention of millions of ordinary citizens and sparked wider debate about the lack of morality in Chinese society.
“The scandal indicates that there is great room for the development of mutual assistant and mutual trust in society,” said a statement from the Guangzhou Youth Volunteer Association.
Wang Yang, Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said it should be a “wake-up call” for society.
“We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet,” he said.
Shocking coldness
Wang was hit by a van and then run over by another on October 13 on the narrow street of the Foshan Hardware Market, where her parents run a small shop.
Security camera footage released by the Southern Television Station in Guangdong revealed that Wang was first hit by a white minivan, which had suddenly accelerated and driven over her body with one of its front wheels. However, the driver, instead of rushing to aid the fallen girl, halted momentarily and then drove away, with a rear wheel running over her again.
The footage showed that three people walked past and observed Wang after the initial accident, yet they failed to take action and within a few minutes a second larger truck ran over the girl.
Altogether 18 passers-by walked or drove past the severely injured Wang in seven minutes after the first hit, but no one stopped to help.
Finally, an elderly woman moved Wang to the roadside and helped find her mother, who took the girl to hospital immediately.
The scandal stunned millions of people and has triggered nationwide soul-searching and introspection. Many decried the apathy and cruelty of the drivers and the passers-by and wondered if China’s rapid economic development has had an effect on the ethics and morality of the general public.
Hu Shenzhi, a psychologist and founder of the Sunflower Counseling Center in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, pointed out that the indifference of passers-by was caused by the “bystander effect,” which refers to the phenomenon that a person will not offer to save a dying man if other passers-by have not already helped.
Hu added that some of the mistrust prevalent in society today stems from previous cases where people who stepped in to offer assistance were later accused of having caused the original accidents. “Many people would rather stay away than get involved in good deeds,” she said.
Gu Xiaoming, a sociology professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University, suggests that humanitarian education should be included in the current education system to enhance young people’s understanding of the value of life and foster a deeper sense of humanity among students.
Legal solutions
Wang’s case once again raised the possibility of legislation against those who refuse to help others in danger at accident scenes.
Several government departments, mass organizations and academies in Guangdong, including the province’s women’s federa- tion, committee of the Communist Youth League and academy of social sciences, have started seeking feedback from the public as to whether this sort of legislation should be enacted.
Zhu Yongping, a well-known lawyer at the Guangzhou-based Datong Law Firm, said that a taskforce would be set up as part of the Guangdong Law Society, which would push for the introduction of duty to rescue legislation.
“Many legal provisions in China, such as that criminalizing drunk driving, were passed after high-profile individual cases, and now is the right time to legislate against refusing to help people in danger,” Zhu said. “If we do not use laws to guide our morality and ethics, our morals might become worse.”
Nie Lize, an associate professor at the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, was also in favor of such a law. “It is necessary to legislate because the moral standards of Chinese people are deteriorating,” he said.
However, Wang Zhongxing, a professor at the Sun Yat-sen University’s Law School, doesn’t think refusing to help people in need is a crime.
“We should be very cautious to handle the issue because legislation is a doubleedged sword,” he said. “It may encourage people to take action but it can also lead to people wrongfully accusing the innocent.”
Wang said the issue was about morals rather than the law. “It is not fair to simply punish people who do not lend a helping hand,” he added.
Huang Na, an associate professor at the Law School of the Chinese People’s Public Security University, also opposed the idea of an all-inclusive legislation in this respect.
“The legislation should be targeted at specially designated groups, such as police officers and medical workers instead of the vast numbers of ordinary citizens,” she said.
Huang’s principal fear was that the“duty to rescue” legislation would lead to too many people becoming suspects and defendants.
“Those who are not technically qualified to rescue the wounded may make the victims’ conditions even worse,” she said. “It may also limit the rights and civil obligations of citizens when morality and ethics are legislated.”
Meanwhile, many psychologists believe Wang’s parents’ neglect was also responsible for the accident, although the passersby who did not stop to help must shoulder the majority of the blame.
Wang’s parents, who came from Liaocheng in Shandong Province, run a small shop in the vast Foshan Hardware Market which houses more than 2,000 businesses.
The market’s narrow roads are thronged with various vehicles and there are no amenities or facilities for the children of migrant workers.
According to official statistics, migrant workers’ children were the victims in a third of the more than 1,000 accidents involving children that took place in Guangdong over the past year.
“A large contributing factor to these tragedies was parents’ neglect,” said Zeng Jinhua, Director of the Guangdong Youth and Children Research and Development Center.
Guangdong is home to a migrant population of about 37 million, which constitutes a third of the province’s total population and a seventh of the country’s migrant population.
Because of struggling finances, migrant workers are usually unable to afford nurseries and day care centers to look after their children.
“Parents don’t have time to spend with their kids,” Zeng said. “So their children are usually playing or walking alone. That poses a great danger to these children.”
Encouraging help
Instead of lobbying for legislation that punishes people for negligence, many scholars and ordinary citizens propose that the first step in encouraging more aid and trust in society should be the protection of those who do make an effort to help. In the previous years, a number of controversial court rulings have found against people who stepped into help.
The case of Peng Yu, a young man who was accused of harming an elderly woman he was actually trying to help, is often cited as having had a negative impact on Chinese citizens’ willingness to offer aid.
On November 20, 2006, an old woman fell to the ground at a bus stop in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, and broke her leg. Peng, who had alighted from the bus, felt obliged to escort her to hospital. But later the woman and her family took Peng to court and the court ruled that he should pay 40 percent of the woman’s medical costs.
The court claimed the decision was taken after reasoning that if Peng had not bumped into the old woman, he would, according to what one would normally do in such a case, have left soon after taking her to the hospital and not have waited for details of her surgery.
Although Peng wasn’t found guilty of any wrongdoing, the court ordered him to pay 45,876 yuan ($6,717) to the old woman. The ruling evoked strong reactions from the public and negatively influenced people who might have previously been willing to help.
According to a recent survey jointly conducted by the Beijing-based Renmin University of China, the Capital University of Economics and Business and the Central University of Finance and Economics, more than 60 percent of respondents thought that a helping hand should be extended to an elderly person in need. However, more than 84 percent of respondents believed it was too risky to offer help, because of the number of would-be-helpers who had previously been blackmailed.
Among those surveyed, only 8 percent said there was still a strong bond of trust between people.
In September, the Ministry of Health issued guidelines on how the public should offer assistance in cases where senior citizens have fallen down, been knocked down
by vehicles or had some other sort of accident.
The guidelines said good Samaritans should try to determine the cause of the accident they are responding to, evaluate the person’s physical conditions, and plan an appropriate response rather than rushing to help.
The ministry insists the guidelines have nothing to do with morality and ethics but explain how to deliver assistance in an effective and proper way.
Tan Ankui, an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University, said that it is unreasonable to ask people to think about how they intend to protect themselves before they rush to the aid of others.
“It should only take a few seconds for a person to decide to rescue victims who urgently need help after a serious accident,”Tan said, adding that those who are found to have made false accusations against an innocent person should be severely punished in accordance with the law.
Zhan Meibai, an associate professor at the Guangzhou-based Jinan University, said those who act bravely for a just cause usually receive praise and encouragement from the public.
“Controversy exists only in a small number of cases,” Zhan said. “Anybody who finds people lying injured on the ground should call the police for help. Or if they want to rescue someone, they can also find witnesses and ask them to leave their phone numbers. The witnesses’ testimony may later prove useful in court.”
The media has also come under scrutiny for over reporting the tiny number of cases where good Samaritans have been wrongfully penalized. The coverage given to these cases and not the many more cases where rescuers have been praised and rewarded has been blamed for playing a role in reducing the public’s willingness to help.
Exemplary deeds
Tan Fang, a professor at the Guangzhoubased South China Normal University, said the media should pay more attention to the deeds of good Samaritans to make the public more aware of the importance of helping those who are in need.
In fact, incidents where people selflessly help each other happen every day.
On October 19, a 20-month-old boy was knocked down by a reversing car at a market in Foshan, the same city where Wang Yue was hit. In the boy’s case, however, a group of passers-by immediately stepped in to help and other witnesses helped stop the offending vehicle.
On October 18, a 32-year-old woman named Qin Guoying, who had also been hit twice by vehicles, was rescued by passers-by in Guangzhou’s Huadu District
On the same day, a 31-year-old man, Niu Zuotao, died in Guangzhou while trying to save a drowning woman. The city government awarded him the title of hero.
In July, a two-year-old girl who fell from her 10th-floor home in Hangzhou, in east China’s Zhejiang Province, was miraculously saved by a young woman who happened to be walking by. The woman, Wu Juping, became a celebrity and was named the “most beautiful mother in China.”
Also in July, a 20-year-old girl named Yu Shuhua became an Internet phenomenon in China for giving her “first kiss” to a drowning elderly man. It was reported that she was on her way back from work when she saw the man being rescued from a river. Having just graduated from a nursing college in Beijing, Yu cleared the man’s airways, knelt down and immediately gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and performed cardiac massage. After the news spread nationwide, many netizens saluted Yu and named her the “most beautiful girl in China.”
“Those who risk themselves to save other people should be highly praised, rewarded and protected to encourage more people to do good deeds,” Tan said.
Tan set up a foundation in March to deal with the risks of helping the elderly in difficult situations. It provides both financial and legal aid to those who get into trouble for helping the elderly.
“Efforts should be made to lift the morality of the whole of society and the conscience of everyone and to prevent scandals involving apathy toward people in need from happening again,” said Wang, the Guangdong Provincial Party chief.
Her death triggered a nationwide wave of mourning, as her case caught the attention of millions of ordinary citizens and sparked wider debate about the lack of morality in Chinese society.
“The scandal indicates that there is great room for the development of mutual assistant and mutual trust in society,” said a statement from the Guangzhou Youth Volunteer Association.
Wang Yang, Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said it should be a “wake-up call” for society.
“We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet,” he said.
Shocking coldness
Wang was hit by a van and then run over by another on October 13 on the narrow street of the Foshan Hardware Market, where her parents run a small shop.
Security camera footage released by the Southern Television Station in Guangdong revealed that Wang was first hit by a white minivan, which had suddenly accelerated and driven over her body with one of its front wheels. However, the driver, instead of rushing to aid the fallen girl, halted momentarily and then drove away, with a rear wheel running over her again.
The footage showed that three people walked past and observed Wang after the initial accident, yet they failed to take action and within a few minutes a second larger truck ran over the girl.
Altogether 18 passers-by walked or drove past the severely injured Wang in seven minutes after the first hit, but no one stopped to help.
Finally, an elderly woman moved Wang to the roadside and helped find her mother, who took the girl to hospital immediately.
The scandal stunned millions of people and has triggered nationwide soul-searching and introspection. Many decried the apathy and cruelty of the drivers and the passers-by and wondered if China’s rapid economic development has had an effect on the ethics and morality of the general public.
Hu Shenzhi, a psychologist and founder of the Sunflower Counseling Center in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, pointed out that the indifference of passers-by was caused by the “bystander effect,” which refers to the phenomenon that a person will not offer to save a dying man if other passers-by have not already helped.
Hu added that some of the mistrust prevalent in society today stems from previous cases where people who stepped in to offer assistance were later accused of having caused the original accidents. “Many people would rather stay away than get involved in good deeds,” she said.
Gu Xiaoming, a sociology professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University, suggests that humanitarian education should be included in the current education system to enhance young people’s understanding of the value of life and foster a deeper sense of humanity among students.
Legal solutions
Wang’s case once again raised the possibility of legislation against those who refuse to help others in danger at accident scenes.
Several government departments, mass organizations and academies in Guangdong, including the province’s women’s federa- tion, committee of the Communist Youth League and academy of social sciences, have started seeking feedback from the public as to whether this sort of legislation should be enacted.
Zhu Yongping, a well-known lawyer at the Guangzhou-based Datong Law Firm, said that a taskforce would be set up as part of the Guangdong Law Society, which would push for the introduction of duty to rescue legislation.
“Many legal provisions in China, such as that criminalizing drunk driving, were passed after high-profile individual cases, and now is the right time to legislate against refusing to help people in danger,” Zhu said. “If we do not use laws to guide our morality and ethics, our morals might become worse.”
Nie Lize, an associate professor at the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, was also in favor of such a law. “It is necessary to legislate because the moral standards of Chinese people are deteriorating,” he said.
However, Wang Zhongxing, a professor at the Sun Yat-sen University’s Law School, doesn’t think refusing to help people in need is a crime.
“We should be very cautious to handle the issue because legislation is a doubleedged sword,” he said. “It may encourage people to take action but it can also lead to people wrongfully accusing the innocent.”
Wang said the issue was about morals rather than the law. “It is not fair to simply punish people who do not lend a helping hand,” he added.
Huang Na, an associate professor at the Law School of the Chinese People’s Public Security University, also opposed the idea of an all-inclusive legislation in this respect.
“The legislation should be targeted at specially designated groups, such as police officers and medical workers instead of the vast numbers of ordinary citizens,” she said.
Huang’s principal fear was that the“duty to rescue” legislation would lead to too many people becoming suspects and defendants.
“Those who are not technically qualified to rescue the wounded may make the victims’ conditions even worse,” she said. “It may also limit the rights and civil obligations of citizens when morality and ethics are legislated.”
Meanwhile, many psychologists believe Wang’s parents’ neglect was also responsible for the accident, although the passersby who did not stop to help must shoulder the majority of the blame.
Wang’s parents, who came from Liaocheng in Shandong Province, run a small shop in the vast Foshan Hardware Market which houses more than 2,000 businesses.
The market’s narrow roads are thronged with various vehicles and there are no amenities or facilities for the children of migrant workers.
According to official statistics, migrant workers’ children were the victims in a third of the more than 1,000 accidents involving children that took place in Guangdong over the past year.
“A large contributing factor to these tragedies was parents’ neglect,” said Zeng Jinhua, Director of the Guangdong Youth and Children Research and Development Center.
Guangdong is home to a migrant population of about 37 million, which constitutes a third of the province’s total population and a seventh of the country’s migrant population.
Because of struggling finances, migrant workers are usually unable to afford nurseries and day care centers to look after their children.
“Parents don’t have time to spend with their kids,” Zeng said. “So their children are usually playing or walking alone. That poses a great danger to these children.”
Encouraging help
Instead of lobbying for legislation that punishes people for negligence, many scholars and ordinary citizens propose that the first step in encouraging more aid and trust in society should be the protection of those who do make an effort to help. In the previous years, a number of controversial court rulings have found against people who stepped into help.
The case of Peng Yu, a young man who was accused of harming an elderly woman he was actually trying to help, is often cited as having had a negative impact on Chinese citizens’ willingness to offer aid.
On November 20, 2006, an old woman fell to the ground at a bus stop in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, and broke her leg. Peng, who had alighted from the bus, felt obliged to escort her to hospital. But later the woman and her family took Peng to court and the court ruled that he should pay 40 percent of the woman’s medical costs.
The court claimed the decision was taken after reasoning that if Peng had not bumped into the old woman, he would, according to what one would normally do in such a case, have left soon after taking her to the hospital and not have waited for details of her surgery.
Although Peng wasn’t found guilty of any wrongdoing, the court ordered him to pay 45,876 yuan ($6,717) to the old woman. The ruling evoked strong reactions from the public and negatively influenced people who might have previously been willing to help.
According to a recent survey jointly conducted by the Beijing-based Renmin University of China, the Capital University of Economics and Business and the Central University of Finance and Economics, more than 60 percent of respondents thought that a helping hand should be extended to an elderly person in need. However, more than 84 percent of respondents believed it was too risky to offer help, because of the number of would-be-helpers who had previously been blackmailed.
Among those surveyed, only 8 percent said there was still a strong bond of trust between people.
In September, the Ministry of Health issued guidelines on how the public should offer assistance in cases where senior citizens have fallen down, been knocked down
by vehicles or had some other sort of accident.
The guidelines said good Samaritans should try to determine the cause of the accident they are responding to, evaluate the person’s physical conditions, and plan an appropriate response rather than rushing to help.
The ministry insists the guidelines have nothing to do with morality and ethics but explain how to deliver assistance in an effective and proper way.
Tan Ankui, an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University, said that it is unreasonable to ask people to think about how they intend to protect themselves before they rush to the aid of others.
“It should only take a few seconds for a person to decide to rescue victims who urgently need help after a serious accident,”Tan said, adding that those who are found to have made false accusations against an innocent person should be severely punished in accordance with the law.
Zhan Meibai, an associate professor at the Guangzhou-based Jinan University, said those who act bravely for a just cause usually receive praise and encouragement from the public.
“Controversy exists only in a small number of cases,” Zhan said. “Anybody who finds people lying injured on the ground should call the police for help. Or if they want to rescue someone, they can also find witnesses and ask them to leave their phone numbers. The witnesses’ testimony may later prove useful in court.”
The media has also come under scrutiny for over reporting the tiny number of cases where good Samaritans have been wrongfully penalized. The coverage given to these cases and not the many more cases where rescuers have been praised and rewarded has been blamed for playing a role in reducing the public’s willingness to help.
Exemplary deeds
Tan Fang, a professor at the Guangzhoubased South China Normal University, said the media should pay more attention to the deeds of good Samaritans to make the public more aware of the importance of helping those who are in need.
In fact, incidents where people selflessly help each other happen every day.
On October 19, a 20-month-old boy was knocked down by a reversing car at a market in Foshan, the same city where Wang Yue was hit. In the boy’s case, however, a group of passers-by immediately stepped in to help and other witnesses helped stop the offending vehicle.
On October 18, a 32-year-old woman named Qin Guoying, who had also been hit twice by vehicles, was rescued by passers-by in Guangzhou’s Huadu District
On the same day, a 31-year-old man, Niu Zuotao, died in Guangzhou while trying to save a drowning woman. The city government awarded him the title of hero.
In July, a two-year-old girl who fell from her 10th-floor home in Hangzhou, in east China’s Zhejiang Province, was miraculously saved by a young woman who happened to be walking by. The woman, Wu Juping, became a celebrity and was named the “most beautiful mother in China.”
Also in July, a 20-year-old girl named Yu Shuhua became an Internet phenomenon in China for giving her “first kiss” to a drowning elderly man. It was reported that she was on her way back from work when she saw the man being rescued from a river. Having just graduated from a nursing college in Beijing, Yu cleared the man’s airways, knelt down and immediately gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and performed cardiac massage. After the news spread nationwide, many netizens saluted Yu and named her the “most beautiful girl in China.”
“Those who risk themselves to save other people should be highly praised, rewarded and protected to encourage more people to do good deeds,” Tan said.
Tan set up a foundation in March to deal with the risks of helping the elderly in difficult situations. It provides both financial and legal aid to those who get into trouble for helping the elderly.
“Efforts should be made to lift the morality of the whole of society and the conscience of everyone and to prevent scandals involving apathy toward people in need from happening again,” said Wang, the Guangdong Provincial Party chief.