Earlier this week, a two-year-old Chinese girl named Wang Yue (nicknamed Yue Yue) was hit by a car. The accident was witnessed by several people, but no one intervened as the little girl was run over again. Yue Yue died today from her injuries.
Intensive care unit director Su Lei told reporters:
“Her injuries were too severe and the treatment had no effect.”
The incident was caught on camera and according to the Daily Mail, 18 people walked passed the injured girl. Yue Yue was on the street for 7 minutes before the second car hit her. Eventually she was picked up by a woman and taken off the street. Yue Yue survived for a week in the hospital, but eventually, she died of brain failure.
The incident sparked an ongoing conversation in China about the decay of public morals. Millions of people took to Sina Corp.’s Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, to talk about Yue Yue.
One user wrote:
“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.”
According to the Daily Mail , Yue Yue’s family has received close to $50,000 from people around the globe who were shocked by Yue Yue’s death.
A Communist party chief told province officials that they need to “take active and effective steps to raise the moral standards of the entire society,” and that “we should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet.”
Police have arrested both of the drivers that hit the little girl but it is unclear what charges they will face.
Yao Yue, a psychologist and director of telephone help-line for distressed people in Beijing, told the CS Monitor :
“Rapid urbanization not only affects China or Foshan, but anywhere in the world where you have a lot of high-rise buildings, where there is high population density, then the relationship with the neighbors, and with each other is affected.”
Have you seen the same sort of disconnect in America? Is Yue Yue’s death an isolated incident, or is apathy rampant around the globe?
