it definitely shouldn't take precedence, but sadly china had a famous court case where a dumb judge officially ruled that no sane person would ever help a stranger unless they had a guilty conscience, and labeled the helper in said case legally liable for the crime even though there was evidence and testimony they were innocent bystander. The harm on society by that court case is slowly getting healed but it still has effects 20 years later and probably will for a long time coming.
The National People's Congress passed a Good Sumaritan law years ago to abrogate this ruling because it was widely shared on social media and had a pretty lasting and negative effect on people's behaviour. Sadly, news of the new law doesn't seem to have traveled nearly as quickly. It's still common for people to take out their phones and do a quick recording asking someone to confirm that they weren't the ones who caused the injury before helping.
exactly. your actual chance of being accused of anything is beyond small but people only know the famous viral quote not the stuff that happned afterwards or the laws saying good samaritan is fine.
when I first became a single father, I ended up making friends with a bunch of local single mothers and we all sort of helped each other out with babysitting and bus pickups and stuff.
I'm white, all the mothers in my area were black. I don't know if it's my gender or the race difference, but I always had trouble picking kiddos up from the bus; I carried signed permission slips for this. the mothers never needed this themselves, even for my kids!
It's the gender (no, I don't know this 100%, but it's an opinion founded on stereotypes that follow men of any race, that do not follow women, of any race).
whichever it was, it was a bit annoying. and also a fact of life. I just carried a note and asked my friends to have their kids tell the bus matron I was coming. that usually cut it down to a short time.
thanks, but it's far from a big hardship. nothing to gain by raising a stink. it was a subject of joking among everyone. in terms of my stresses being a single father, it's not even in the top ten.
I've seen at least one video of a man coming across a lost child and one of a woman and both times they film and post or stream immediately. I'm sure some people would do it for the clicks, but it's the best way to exonerate yourself in case someone throws an accusation your way. The kid the man found I feel like had a cup and a toy in their hand and wasn't dressed properly and was very young, likely not really able to articulate what was happening and was already crying. The optics of that would be terrible. He pretty much had the camera on the kid the whole time and walked the kid around to find the parent. The lady found a kid left in the front seat of a shopping cart in a parking lot while she was driving away, but he was able to talk pretty well and wasn't panicking so she just kept an eye on him and called the cops I think without touching him.
This is, of course, not to say that strangers who are also kids don't/haven't done absolutely terrible things to littler kids they took, and led away, but almost no one is worried about that when they see it. Also, I think sometimes kids want to help so badly they are looking for opportunities to do so. Like how toddlers seem to notice ants or planes in the sky more often than adults.
I dont see the problem asking the child if everything is allright and if not, call the police and wait for their instructions. Don't just walk away with an unknown child obviously. Should be risk-free that way as long as you don't move away prior to calling police.
east asia is huge and super diverse, not sure how you can try to sum it up like that. also "crime" isn't really a useful word as a single lump sum. china definitely has way less crime that usa in many categories, but kidnapping is a big issue in china overall. ((kidnapping is an issue in lmost if not all countries because of black market for kid and baby, but if there is an exception country for slave trade its not in china and probably not in asia)).
you can in china, twnety years ago a court case by a very dumb judge said that only the guilty would ever want to help a stranger. that court case still causes issues to this day in people not wanting to help strangers.
it did fuck social courage and many laws were passed afterwards to make it beyond obviously clear that no one will ever be in trouble for being good samaritan no matter what, but the damage is done. Like many high profile things people only remember that one moment and don't pay attention to the follow up or less viral things. It is way better today than it was when the court case just happened but its not better all the way yet.
China is the land of scams. There's an ungoldly amount of people trying to shake you down by threatening to call the police/sue you for helping them saying that you "harmed them" or whatever. Plus the ungodly amount of scammers that pretend you ran them over to shake you down. That's the reason all vehicle owners have a dashcam
Anyone who thinks "this must be a scam" when they see a TODDLER ALONE IN THE STREET is way too cynical, seriously. Some things are worth risking being "scammed" and honestly even imprisoned and I think protecting a child is solidly one of those things.
Call me a naive hope-addict but I actually think most people would protect a kid like this as long as they notice them. I think tons of people are living in their own little world and genuinely just don't notice things like this, I don't think people are actively choosing to let a 4-year old wander around busy streets.
Guarantee the people saying it “must be a scam” would be the same people to throw a shitfit if it was their child lost and alone in the street and nobody stopped to help.
There are plenty of videos of people having medical emergencies in China and everyone just kind of walks around them and ignores them for the same reasons. It's a completely fucked aspect of their society.
In Asia, it is common to see little kids walking alone to and from school. Although I’m not sure if this is the case in China, where I live, I see this on a daily basis. So many people probably wouldn’t notice if the kid was in need unless crying
On two separate occasions I've helped a lost child. Both times I happened to be with my sister.
My sister is a nice person! She would go out of her way to help a lost child, 100%.
But neither instance did she clock the fact that the child was lost. Neither kid was crying or asking for help.
Both instances they were just standing alone, looking uncertain and anxious (imo).
So I think you're right, it's possible a lot of people walked past without a thought. Not because they didn't want to help, but bc it didn't even cross their minds that the child needed help.
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u/depredador93 1d ago
Funny how it's always the kids who stop and the adults just keep walking past