China Soul-Searches Over Hit-And-Run Toddler

A video of a toddler being ignored after she was run over by two vans has prompted soul-searching in China over why people failed to help her.

Two-year-old Yueyue is fighting for her life and thought to be brain dead after the incident in Foshan city, in southern Guangdong province.

CCTV footage, which was shown on a local television station, showed the little girl wondering along a narrow market street before a van drives over her.

As she lies in a pool of blood on the ground, several people walk past without stopping to check on her.

She is then hit by another van which appears to run over her legs - by this time about 18 people have failed to come to her aid despite obviously seeing her lying in agony.

Finally, rubbish collector Chen Xianmei picked Yueyue up and moved her out of the road.

A woman thought to be the girl's mother arrived shortly after.

The video has been viewed by millions of people around the world and has led to a heated debate in China about whether the country has reached a moral low.

The case is the latest heavily-publicised example of people in distress being ignored by fellow Chinese citizens in a phenomenon seen as illustrating the damaging effect China's pursuit of economic growth has had on public ethics.

"This brings a blow to our morality," newsreader Yan Yanzi from Southern Television Guangdong said in a report that has been uploaded to video-sharing sites.

"Where was your conscience? It is really disappointing news to watch, really disappointing," she said at the end of the report.

Both drivers of the vans have been arrested and some have called for harsh punishments for them.

While decrying the decline in social morality, many commentators have also pointed to China's lack of legal protections, such as a "Good Samaritan" law that would protect people from lawsuits if they try to help others in distress.

Some may be deterred from intervening in cases like this after a previous court ruling in Tianjin.

There, a man who said he had helped an elderly woman who had fallen in the street was accused by the old lady and her family of knocking her down.

The court ordered the man to pay a huge compensation figure and his appeal is now awaiting a higher court's ruling.

"Although saving people constantly brings 'trouble', nonetheless, ignoring the dying or even helping with evil acts by negligence is ripping apart society's ethical baseline and dissolving any sense of conscience deep in the souls of the public," commentator Li Hongbing wrote in People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party.