The conscience of a nation has been pricked by tragedy, writes Barbara Demick in Beijing.
How do you turn bad Samaritans good?
The question has become a national obsession ever since the shocking death of a two-year-old named Yueyue who was ignored by 18 passers-by as she lay bleeding on the street after a hit-and-run last month in southern China.
Nearly every day brings a fresh outrage - an 88-year-old man suffocating in his own blood after falling and breaking a nose, people rushing to photograph a suicide attempt without helping - and another hand-wringing editorial about how to cultivate the kindness of strangers.
The latest example came on Wednesday, when a five-year-old boy playing on the pavement was struck by a wooden beam that had fallen from a construction site in the city of Linyi, in the eastern province of Shandong.
His mother begged motorists and bystanders to help bring him to a hospital but all refused - including the chengguan, low-level municipal police, who drove by and ignored her, local media reported.
An ambulance eventually arrived, but the boy, Longlong, died on his way to the hospital.
''With little Yueyue just departed,'' one outraged commentator wrote on Thursday on the Sina Weibo microblog, ''what happened to little Longlong again raises questions about people's morals and conscience.''
In almost every province, laws are being revised to indemnify ''Good Samaritans'' against being sued if their efforts fail - one of the main reasons Chinese say they are reluctant to get involved.
Groups with names such as China Kindness and Filial Piety Special Committee and the Office of National Spiritual Civilisation have launched special projects to encourage better behaviour by the public.
''Trust is one of the hottest topics at the moment,'' said Wu Yilin, a pollster at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Her department has been surveying people about the degree to which they would help a stranger.
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