Society's Deep Coma

Hard to believe that life has grown so cheap in the most populous country in the world that the plight of a tiny toddler would not move the conscience of passersby to come to her aid when she was struck down by a vehicle, left bleeding in the roadway. Despite which, her condition was simply not sufficiently compelling to awaken compassion in one passerby after another, most of whom carefully walked around and past the severely injured child.

She lay there, bleeding, her small arms waving, mutely appealing for rescue. The driver of the white van that originally struck the two-year-old child as she stood in the road, stopped briefly as though evaluating the situation, then proceeded, without exiting his vehicle to survey the child's condition, and ran over her again. A second vehicle also ran over the child, after a succession of disinterested passersby left her lying on the road, in agony, bleeding and vulnerable to continued trauma.

Even a mother, grasping the hand of her own child bypassed the horribly injured toddler. In full, eighteen passersby were seen on closed circuit television, disinterested in making any effort whatever in coming to the aid of the tiny child. No one made any attempt to help, to move the child from the road, leaving her exposed to further traffic assaults on her frail, bleeding body.

Until a street sweeper, someone on the lowest rung of the social-economic ladder, a grandmother, dropped her cleaning equipment and rushed over to the child, lifting her, and then attempting to find her mother. Chen Xianmei did find the child's mother. The little girl's name is Yueyue, child of migrants from the countryside in Guangdong Province, to the urban precincts of Foshan City.

How is it possible that people could be so implacably disinterested in the welfare of a small child? So removed from compassion, from ordinary concern for the welfare of others that they completely disassociate themselves from any kind of moral responsibility for the safety of a child? One could never, however, claim, that this represents the lost values of Chinese society.

Without doubt, it could happen anywhere in the world. But it did happen in China. Some blame previous incidents where Good Samaritans went out of their way to assist others, only to find themselves blamed for the suffering of the one they attempted to assist, or held accountable financially for them. Peoples' concerns for conniving circumstances that might make them accountable beyond passing assistance seems to have constrained their consciences.

Until the street cleaner - after 18 unconcerned others left the child to die - took it upon herself to exercise her compassionate nature in assisting a dreadfully injured child, no one seemed to care. "It is very hard for people. The old norms of ethical relationships are going out the window. The networks built out of people's kinship groups - their home village, their family - have been broken."

Is that what it is? Without some vested interest none need react? Strangers are to be left to fend helplessly for themselves? Even children so young they cannot fend for themselves? The little two-year-old happened to be facing the direction the truck was approaching while she toddled onto the street. She saw the truck moving toward her - she raised both her arms in fear and anticipation of being struck.

The driver of the white van, the first vehicle to strike little Yueyue complained, "If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,213). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan." Yueyue's father weeps with his wife for his child's survival, wanting only, he said, to hear her voice calling him "Daddy" again.

Yueyue is in hospital on life support, in a deep coma.