Speaking as someone who lived in China for many years: one of the biggest culture-shock differences Westerners (and particularly Americans) experience in Chinese cities is how people will straight up refuse to help strangers they don't know.

This is not because Chinese people are dicks. Frankly, if you're a (white) foreigner, you're going to be treated better than average by almost everyone as it is. But people hold back, because helping other people has the potential to have huge negative consequences if you get involved.

Here in the states, people are amazingly open to helping someone they've never met. This cultural assumption works because everyone 'just knows' that the person helping is not responsible for anything beyond that particular interaction. We even have Good Samaritan laws on the books that ensure that it is legally safe to do your best to render assistance in extreme circumstances.

It is the complete opposite in China. If you help someone, it is assumed that you are taking responsibility for their entire problem. (Yes, I am oversimplifying, there's more to it than this. But this is an accurate general gist.)

I don't know anything about this fellow, but this particular video of his, at least, does an excellent job explaining what is going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4vXYfa06k

He is talking about the modern experience, but it is the same as what I remember from the 80's. The only thing I disagree with him about is that I do not see it as a new phenomenon.

I've been in China off and on from 2003-2008, and I've also noticed the phenomenon this video describes whereby people do NOT help out strangers in need, but never really knew the legal why. I always just assumed it was a cultural aspect I was told (can't find the name of it) whereby if you are not part of a Chinese person's social network, then you are effectively irrelevant to them, which was the reason why you should never be offended when people don't wave or smile back at you.

But anyway, I'm not optimistic considering the legal/cultural reasons for the pedestrian issue and the "Broken Vase Scam" in the video will get applied to bigger social challenges.

watching some more of this YouTuber's videos...interesting stuff...autoplay sent me to this other scam described as:

"driving in China can be really frustrating sometimes. Now China has a problem with people baiting each other to break the law so that you can break the law and they can claim a reward. This is blackmail and extortion inCARnate"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7auIEiTRZI

I don't know if that's true or not, but if the penalties described in that article are accurate, I'd say the penalties for killing someone with a vehicle, either from recklessness or malice, are shockingly lenient.

Yeah. My impression is that Chinese penalites for many crimes are out of whack and need to be tuned better so the punishment fits the crime. (Not saying that The West is perfect, but as I said above, I don't think China's legal system is quite as well-refined.)

There was actually quite a lot of discussion on HN on the slate article, with many people who live(d) in China attesting to the truth of the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395