Social Stability - 141. page

Xinhua news agency reported Monday that more than a dozen passers-by ignored a two-year-old girl as she lay critically injured on a street in southern China after a van, and later a truck, ran over her.

A surveillance camera showed a series of people walking past and ignoring the child, named Yue Yue, after she was hit first by a van and then run over by a truck in the street outside her family’s shop in the southern Chinese city of Foshan. Xinhua said a rubbish collector, who finally came to the child’s aid, moved her to the curb and shouted for help. Several shopkeepers ignored the cries for help before he finally tracked down the child’s mother who took her to the hospital.

The video from the surveillance camera has sparked wide-spread outrage on China’s social media sites. One netizen on Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro-blog similar to Twitter, wrote: "This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn’t be treated so heartlessly."

Source: AFP, October 17, 2011
http://tinyurl.com/3t4lejl

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s State Council issued a notice on August 21, 2011, announcing a name change. The name of “the Central Committee for the Comprehensive Management of the Social Order” will be changed to “the Central Committee for Comprehensive Social Management.” The new Central Committee for Comprehensive Social Management will take more responsibility in terms of maintaining the social order and have 11 additional departments under it with more offices.

The Central Committee for Comprehensive Social Management is a coordinating body, responsible for coordinating and guiding all local offices and departments to implement the CCP Central Committee and State Council’s arrangements and policies on strengthening and innovating social management.

Source: Xinhua, October 08, 2011
http://news.xinhuanet.com/2011-10/08/c_122130018.htm

On September 19, 2011, Global Times, a daily tabloid under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper, People’s Daily, reported that Ma Wencong, a high school student, knocked down a victim with his luxury car, a Mercedes Benz, in the City of Wenzhou. According to the report, Ma was driving his girlfriend to a spa and intentionally violated traffic rules. He claimed to be the Mayor’s son. Thousands of city residents surrounded the site and prevented a police car from leaving, insisting that the police complete the paperwork on site. The crowd would not disperse for more than 5 hours. In the past couple of years, many similar accidents have occurred across China, all involving luxury cars and relatives of government officials.

Source: Global Times, September 19, 2011
http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-09/2017098.html

The Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) recently released a report stating that China’s current urban-rural income gap ratio is 3.23:1, which means that China has one of the largest urban-rural income gaps in the world.

The urban-rural disparity in the Midwest provinces is even greater. There, the urban-rural income gap ratio is up to 4:1 or more, which is even higher than the national average.

Source: Huanqiu, September 20, 2011
http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-09/2017113.html

On September 2, 2011, Chutian Metropolis Daily, a newspaper in Wuhan, Hubei Province, reported that an 88-year-old man fell on the street in Wuhan and onlookers watched him dying.

The old man fell over near a vegetable market, less than 100 meters from his home. Though more and more onlookers surrounded him and watched, no one helped him up. After his wife and son came, more than an hour later, he was taken to the hospital. He died of suffocation from a nosebleed. “If someone had helped him by turning him over and letting the blood flow out from his nose, he might not have left … ,” cried his wife.

Source: Chutian Metropolis Daily, September 3, 2011
http://www.cnhubei.com/news/ctdsb/ctdsbsgk/ctdsb12/201109/t1818246.shtml

On September 6, 2011, People’s Daily Online published a commentary suggesting the use of video surveillance to restore people’s confidence in social morality.

Regarding a recent report of an incident in which no one helped an old man who fell over on the street and suffocated to death due to a nosebleed, the commentary said that such tragedies are not uncommon in China. Not all the onlookers who stood by were cold hearted. Due to incidents in which some people fell to the ground and then sued or framed the good hearted people who helped them, many people dare not offer help anymore. Therefore, the commentary proposed using “video surveillance” as a strategy to solve the dilemma so that people’s confidence in social morality can be restored.

Source: People’s Daily Online, September 6, 2011
http://opinion.people.com.cn/GB/15594017.html

In a recent interview with Beijing News, the Chief of the Forbidden City Museum offered acknowledgements and apologies regarding widely reported scandals. In the past three months, the national museum was reportedly involved in at least ten scandals. The scandals were mainly about stolen treasures that had been on display, the incorrect use of words as an academic authority, secretly using part of the Palace as a private club, breaking several historic relics, lying about wrongdoings, bribing informants, selling museum-owned collections for profit, the loss of hundreds of historic books, and tax evasion. The Museum promised that it will continue to investigate some of these issues internally and will plug some of the holes discovered. The Museum is cooperating with the police department on some leads and legal investigations.

Source: Beijing News, August 20, 2011
http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2011-08/20/content_266817.htm?div=-1

To learn a lesson from the “7.23” (Wenzhou high speed train wreck) accident, the Ministry of Railways of the PRC issued a notice demanding that no violations of regulations, no violations of discipline, and no accidents (the three NOs) occur before the end of the year. The notice requires that every Party division and member working in the front line promise publicly to achieve the goal of the “three NOs.” Additionally, they should do so in the form of having a public promise ceremony or setting up an open poster board, so that the people can monitor them. The Surveillance group of the Political Division at the Ministry of Railways will examine the performance of the Party division and the members’ security work.

Source: People’s Daily, August 25, 2011
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/15502282.html