BEIJING // A toddler left for dead on the road after a hit-and-run has caused China to ask why its people are so reluctant to help each other.
Wang Yue, 2, was ignored by motorists and passers-by as she lay on the street.
Her bloodied face, nearly covered by medical tubes and tape, has been on the front page of state-run newspapers for the past two days.
Last night, she lay in a hospital bed barely alive and doctors fear she may be brain dead after being struck twice by vehicles and left lying in the road.
More than a dozen pedestrians and motorcyclists passed her in the horrifying incident, captured on CCTV on Thursday in the southern city of Foshan.
A rubbish collector, a middle-aged woman named Chen Xianmei, has been hailed as a hero for pulling the little girl, known as Yue Yue, to the side of the road after others failed to even contact the emergency services.
"If the passers-by had called police at the very beginning, my daughter wouldn't have been run over by the second van and be in this condition," said the girl's mother, named only as Qu. The child was struck by the vehicles after she wandered off from the nearby family hardware store.
The two drivers who struck Yue Yue are in custody.
Yan Yanzi, a newsreader on Southern Television Guangdong, said the case "brings a blow to our morality".
"Where was your conscience? It is really disappointing news to watch, really disappointing," she said.
Millions of comments have been posted about the incident on China's media and internet community. But it is not the first time in which people have failed to offer assistance to someone in need.
Last month, an 88-year-old man died in a busy street in central China's Hubei province after he collapsed and was ignored for 90 minutes. The pensioner, surnamed Li, would probably have survived if he had received help, since his death was apparently caused by suffocation from a nosebleed.
People are said to be reluctant to help because those who assist often end up being blamed for causing the injuries of those in distress.
In Jiangsu province in eastern China earlier this year, a bus driver, Yin Hongbin, stopped his vehicle to help an 81-year-old woman who had fallen over, only to be accused of having run her down.
Video recorded by the bus proved Mr Yin was blameless but, in other cases, kind-hearted passers-by have received hefty medical bills.
In Nanjing in late 2006, a young man named Peng Yu was told to pay 40 per cent of the treatment costs for an elderly woman he assisted after she fell and broke a leg.
A court used the fact Mr Peng helped the woman to hospital and checked on her condition as evidence he was probably responsible for bumping into her and knocking her down.
As a result, there have been calls for a law to protect those who aid people in distress.
But some claim other factors are an influence. Rampant materialism after decades of furious economic growth has been blamed by commentators for creating a culture of indifference to human life.
Others feel the reasons are more deep-rooted.
"In China's traditional culture, people are concerned about their family members and friends, but they are not really concerned about strangers," said Chen Xin, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The mutual help system among family and friends was "very strong" but outside this circle "their behaviour and attitude is quite different".
"Maybe they're very cold, very careless, maybe they don't think they have a duty," he added.