Death of Wang Yue

Wang Yue (Chinese: 王悦; pinyin: Wáng Yuè), also known as "Little Yue Yue" (Chinese: 小悅悅), was a two-year-old Chinese girl who was run over by two motorists on the afternoon of 13 October 2011, in a narrow road in Foshan, Guangdong. As she lay bleeding and unconscious on the road for more than seven minutes, at least 18 passers-by skirted around her body, ignoring her.^[1] She was eventually helped by a female rubbish scavenger and sent to a hospital for treatment, but succumbed to her injuries and died eight days later. The closed-circuit television recording of the incident was uploaded onto the Internet, and quickly stirred widespread reaction in China and overseas.

Many commentators believed this to be indicative of the moral decline in contemporary Chinese society.^[2] However, other commentators credited the high-profile Peng Yu incident in 2006,^[3] in which someone who helped an injured accident victim was accused of having injured the victim himself and was forced to pay for the victim's medical bill, as having caused people to fear getting in trouble for helping in Wang's case.^[4][1] Several regional Good Samaritan laws were passed following the incident and in 2017 a new national Good Samaritan law came into force to prevent such situations through the country.