On Friday October 21 two-year-old Wang Yue, from China’s industrial heartland Guangdong, died. This in itself is hardly any news and in a country like China, as in India, where infant mortality is a daily reality, a fact we have to swallow. Now as more details are added about Wang Yue’s death, check where it touches a chord or if there is a lump in the throat — Wang Yue was run over by a van in a Foshan market on October 13; after the driver noticed that the front wheel had gone over her, he stopped, deliberated what to do next (in China compensation for death is limited while medical costs for the injured can be ongoing) and ran the rear types over her and sped away; 18 people (including women) passed by but avoided attending to her; in between another van ran over her. All this happened while the market was in full swing. If not for a 58-year-old street cleaner, Yueyue, as Wang Yue’s parents called her, would have been left unattended for who knows how long.
The question to ask is: Has China traded its soul to keep pace with development? The answer is not an easy one but that seems to be the consensus many are arriving at, or are afraid that will soon befall the Middle Kingdom. While Internet sites are filled with discussions about this “painful heartlessness”, as one Sina Weibo user put it, a significant move is the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party last week acknowledging that China needs to build a “powerful socialist culture” and has decided that the main theme for this year’s plenum will be “cultural development”.
There are many factors that lead to this insensitiveness and while it is one thing to pass judgment sitting in a different country or in the comfort of the armchair, it is an altogether different story when put in a real situation.
Many people in China attribute this callousness to what is called the ‘Nanjing Effect’. In 2006, a man from Nanjing helped an elderly woman to the hospital after she had broken her leg. He was sued and ended up paying 40 per cent of her medical bills — all for extending a helping hand to a stranger; and this is just one of the many cases where Good Samaritans have ended up being victimised. In some Western countries, like Canada, there is a Good Samaritan Law which protects people who are not from the medical fraternity from facing liability for helping victims. In France and Germany law has it that it is the duty of every citizen to help victims.
It might be a far call for such laws to be effective in populous countries, but experts agree that a vacuum has been created in China by the Communist Party’s ‘iron fist’ policies. “No one believes in Marxism any more, Confucianism is not being revived, and Western values are not being accepted,” Bo Zhiyue, a Chinese politics expert, told Globe and Mail.
Eighteenth Century England lamented the loss of the mild pace of life and the mechanisation of man with the advent of Industrial Revolution. After Luddites attacked factories, laws were passed to protect machines. While England was the industrial powerhouse then, today, without batting an eyelid one can say that China is the vortex of industrial growth. Now China is contemplating passing laws to protect people who show traces of tenderness and kindness towards fellow humans — it’s a vicious cycle we’ve completed.
That brings us to the headline: Is development dehumanising us? If China does not address this numbing plague, it will be too late before it realises that the rapid economic and technological development it is achieving is creating soulless terracotta warriors in the hope that they will one day rise and protect society.
(This appeared in The New Indian Express on October 26 in the Mindspace)
The question to ask is: Has China traded its soul to keep pace with development? The answer is not an easy one but that seems to be the consensus many are arriving at, or are afraid that will soon befall the Middle Kingdom. While Internet sites are filled with discussions about this “painful heartlessness”, as one Sina Weibo user put it, a significant move is the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party last week acknowledging that China needs to build a “powerful socialist culture” and has decided that the main theme for this year’s plenum will be “cultural development”.
There are many factors that lead to this insensitiveness and while it is one thing to pass judgment sitting in a different country or in the comfort of the armchair, it is an altogether different story when put in a real situation.
Many people in China attribute this callousness to what is called the ‘Nanjing Effect’. In 2006, a man from Nanjing helped an elderly woman to the hospital after she had broken her leg. He was sued and ended up paying 40 per cent of her medical bills — all for extending a helping hand to a stranger; and this is just one of the many cases where Good Samaritans have ended up being victimised. In some Western countries, like Canada, there is a Good Samaritan Law which protects people who are not from the medical fraternity from facing liability for helping victims. In France and Germany law has it that it is the duty of every citizen to help victims.
It might be a far call for such laws to be effective in populous countries, but experts agree that a vacuum has been created in China by the Communist Party’s ‘iron fist’ policies. “No one believes in Marxism any more, Confucianism is not being revived, and Western values are not being accepted,” Bo Zhiyue, a Chinese politics expert, told Globe and Mail.
Eighteenth Century England lamented the loss of the mild pace of life and the mechanisation of man with the advent of Industrial Revolution. After Luddites attacked factories, laws were passed to protect machines. While England was the industrial powerhouse then, today, without batting an eyelid one can say that China is the vortex of industrial growth. Now China is contemplating passing laws to protect people who show traces of tenderness and kindness towards fellow humans — it’s a vicious cycle we’ve completed.
That brings us to the headline: Is development dehumanising us? If China does not address this numbing plague, it will be too late before it realises that the rapid economic and technological development it is achieving is creating soulless terracotta warriors in the hope that they will one day rise and protect society.
(This appeared in The New Indian Express on October 26 in the Mindspace)
What happened in China is just a reflection of consumerism-oriented policies that are being advocated by developed counties and global financial institutions. People are being encouraged to be extremely individualistic and deliberately ignore fellow human beings in the rat race to pile up personal wealth. When the system teaches everyone to leave the ill-fated to fend for themselves, why would one expect the people to show any kindness?
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