Looking the other way

I wasn't going to post about this at first.

I try not to be too 'serious' on here most of the time. And I am averse to jumping on bandwagons. And there are going to be plenty of other people discussing this more thoroughly, more thoughtfully over the next few days.

Also, to be honest, I found my responses a little numb at first. I'm afraid we all succumb to compassion fatigue after a while. When living in China, we also develop outrage fatigue and disgust fatigue. These emotions are so over-exercised on an almost-daily basis that our threshold sensitivity steadily ramps up until we become inured even to the most horrific tragedies and injustices.

But there has been one dominant topic of conversation in China over the last couple of days, amongst locals and foreigners alike. There is no getting away from it. The spread of the Internet, and in particular the explosion of microblogging in the last 18 months or so, has meant that certain news stories can attain near universal awareness within 24 hours, even if they're not receiving much attention in the mainstream media.

And so it has been this week with the heartbreaking story of a two-year-old girl killed by a hit-and-run driver in Foshan, a city in Guangdong province.

No, a delivery van driver somehow didn't see her wandering around unsupervised in the lane ahead of him; and, though he noticed that he'd hit something and briefly stopped, he decided to drive on - running over the poor child with his rear wheel as well.

Nor did another delivery driver see her broken body lying at the side of the road when he ran over her for a second time a few minutes later.

However, debate over the incident has mostly focused not on the delinquency of her parents (why were they letting her wander around on her own in such a hazardous environment, how could they not notice her absence for so long?) or the lethal inattentiveness of two successive drivers, but the reaction - or lack of it - of pedestrians in the vicinity. This happened in the middle of a bustling hardware market (it's not clear from the slightly edited version of the security camera footage being disseminated online, but it appears that the mother was working in a stall just a few metres away), with dozens of stallholders and customers nearby, who surely must have seen or heard something of the accident or its aftermath. But no-one came to help. In fact, no fewer than 18 people walked or cycled right past the appallingly injured girl, paying her no attention at all. She  lay ignored in the road for 7 or 8 minutes until, finally, a middle-aged lady who scrapes a living salvaging trash around the market came along and decided to try to help her.

Almost more depressing than the incident itself is much of the online Chinese discussion that has been developing about it (some illustrative examples, in English, on ChinaSmack's post of the story). Many of the commenters, perhaps the majority, while acknowledging how regrettable the event was, nevertheless state that they would have done exactly the same thing - turned a blind eye and walked on by.

Yes, the point has been well made by some that this might not be a uniquely Chinese failing; social psychologists have analysed a so-called 'bystander phenomenon' - in all countries and cultures - where passers-by feel strangely inhibited about intervening in 'difficult' situations. However, I would think that in most of the developed countries - in my own experience, at least - this common reaction of hesitancy to intervene is chiefly conditioned by two factors: embarrassment (being unsure of the right action to take, or fear of doing something inappropriate) and lack of compelling pressure (we're fairly confident, in an urban situation, that someone - someone better able to deal with the situation - will step forward to help soon; if we encounter someone injured in the remote countryside, where we might be their only chance of help, I don't think we'd ever pass them by). In China, that second factor is evidently not in play: there is every possibility that, even in a busy setting, no-one will come forward to offer assistance.

And the main inhibiting factor is not mere embarrassment at one's possible ineptitude or powerlessness, it is fear of consequences. Hospital fees can be brutally expensive here, and there is a general - and probably not unreasonable - apprehension that anyone who takes someone to hospital, or even reports an accident, may find themselves being expected to foot the bill, and indeed may perhaps be aggressively pressed to do so by the police, or the victim, or the victim's family. There is a particular terror of possible criminal charges - so-called 'Nanjing cases', named after an incident in the southern city of Nanjing that became notorious on the Internet 5 or 6 years ago: a 'good Samaritan' took an old woman who had fallen or been knocked down in the street to hospital; subsequently, she rounded on her helper and accused him of having attacked her (perhaps through mental confusion about the incident, but more probably out of ruthless opportunism); when the case went to court, the numbskull judge pronounced that only a malefactor's guilt would prompt someone to help a stranger in this way.

That one outrageously irresponsible remark has entrenched a culture of passing by on the other side. Almost no-one here has the courage to try to assist an injured person. People die on the street every day in China; often the bodies lie there - dying, dead - for hours (one wag on that ChinaSmack thread observed, with bitter truth, that the lady trash-scavenger who called for help for this girl in Foshan "obviously doesn't read the Internet"). But I don't think that judge created this culture. His words - reprehensible though they were - reflected a prevalent Chinese attitude; they were an unfortunately accurate statement of a general truth. There has long been a culture of selfishness here, of narrow concern and narrow responsibilities: one looks out for oneself and one's family - and the extension of 'family' through the network of social obligations known as guanxi - but anyone outside of that gilded circle is a non-person and can be disregarded. The traditional religions and philosophies here don't seem to have established such a thoroughgoing moral infrastructure as the Judaeo-Christian legacy has in the West (in general, I deplore all religion as fatuous superstition; but if believing in a Celestial Policeman induces people to behave decently to each other, then perhaps it is worthwhile after all). I suspect the Mao era made things worse, as Communist ideology displaced so many of the ancient beliefs and the entire population was plunged into a brutal struggle to survive, with friends and neighbours turned against each other. And this trait of ruthless selfishness continues to dominate, as the burgeoning economy fosters an extreme materialism - these days, it's all about making money, by any means necessary.

However, a moral infrastructure grows not just from ideology and tradition, but from the public institutions of a country. China has the lowest levels of social trust in the world. If medical care were of better quality and more affordably priced, and if decent health insurance were more widely available, there wouldn't be so much reluctance to try to help road accident victims (and drivers running down a pedestrian wouldn't - as it is commonly thought some do - reverse to and fro over their victim to make sure that they are dead [compensation for a death being much less than the bill for a lengthy spell of hospitalization]). If there were a half-way decent legal system (with adequate training and supervision of judges, for example; so that people like our man in Nanjing could never sit on the bench), drivers involved in accidents might trust that they could be found non-culpable in some circumstances, or that promptly helping their victims would mitigate their punishment. But no - anyone who falls seriously ill or gets injured in this country is going to get screwed over by the system: hassled by the police (yes, I've seen a guy with a broken leg being interrogated on the sidewalk about how he managed to get himself run over), overcharged by their doctors, cheated by their insurance company (if they have one); and they can't expect any assistance from the courts, or from their 'representatives' in government. And any passer-by who tries to help them is likely to get embroiled in the same hideous mess; it's easier to just leave someone to die by the roadside.

This can change. A lot of people hailed the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 as a watershed in the development of Chinese morality. Prior to that, there'd been a lot of discussion about the country's moral atrophy, the prevailing culture of every-man-for-himself, the seeming lack of 'Western' virtues like charity and compassion - at least, for anyone outside one's immediate sphere of acquaintances or connections. But that tragedy touched people's hearts, and galvanised many into action, not just making cash donations to the disaster funds but in very many cases loading their cars up with supplies and driving hundreds of kilometres across the country to lend a hand directly in the rescue and relief efforts.

Perhaps this poor little girl, Yue Yue, who died of multiple internal injuries a few days later, can help the Chinese to take another step forward on this path of moral development. The shock, the outrage, the guilt, the shame that millions of Chinese are feeling at the moment are very strong. I hope those feelings can be channelled to good use. I hope that people angered by what has just happened in Foshan will recognise some of its root causes - the shambolic criminal justice system, poor driving standards, shortcomings in the healthcare and insurance systems, the lack of public education about first aid and appropriate emergency response - and start to demand that something be done about them.

However, I rather fear that this may prove to be another of the Internet's ephemeral causes célèbres, and that in a week or two it will lapse from the public consciousness, to be replaced by some new horror story of the day. I hope not. There is a chance for something positive to come out of this.