(Image Source: Wan Jia)

BY IRIS ZHANG

ANCHOR ZACH TOOMBS

You're watching multisource global news analysis from Newsy.com.

Outrage -- that’s the feeling that’s permeated through the public after an incident involving a two-year-old Chinese girl, nicknamed Yueyue. A surveillance camera shows the toddler being run over twice by two different vans in a market in the city of Foshan.

After the incident, the video shows 18 people either walked, rode or drove by her. None of them stopped to lend a hand, until a trash collector moved her body and notified her parents. The toddler is now in the hospital and suffering severe brain trauma. (Video source: Huffington Post)

The incident has sparked global debates over legal and moral standards in China. According to ABC News, the apathy comes from the saying “no good deed goes unpunished.” Many Chinese learned this lesson through an infamous 2006 case where...
 
“...a young man named Peng Yu went to the aid of an elderly woman … only to have the woman turn around and accuse him for being the person who knocked her down. A Nanjing judge then ruled that 'common sense' suggested that Peng only took the woman to the hospital because he was guilty and ordered him to pay her medical expenses.”

The Wall Street Journal says that might be the case but asks what about the camera -- could it have helped?

“In dissecting the Yueyue incident, many commenters have pointed to another explanation: China’s lack of a Good Samaritan law to protect those who help strangers in need … Would any of the people who passed the child by have stopped to help had they known there was camera footage to prove their good intentions?”

But China Daily reports, China’s officials have given out some “tips” on how to be a “qualified” Samaritan. For example...

“Last month, the Ministry of Health issued suggestions on the best ways the public can offer help to senior citizens who have fallen down … The guidelines said good Samaritans should try to determine the cause of the accident they are responding to and plan a way to respond rather than rushing in to help.”

Even with legal protection, many people still hesitate to help those in need. A psychologist explains this bystander effect to CNN.

“We have all these different attitudes and beliefs inside of us and we say 'If I was there, I would do this,' but we don’t know until we're in the actual moment. Our brain has a way of dealing with trauma that basically, we kind like dissociate from things.”

And finally, the state-run Xinhua agency says, this isn’t an issue of flawed laws; this is a moral problem.

“In recent years, the perception of a decline of morals has become a hot topic as profit and materialism are perceived to be affecting society's values … A strong chorus of opinion on the Internet says laws should exempt Samaritans from liability, yet laws themselves cannot solve society's morality dilemma.”