BEIJIING — Several dramatic recent incidents — including one involving a 2-year-old girl run over in the road while more than a dozen bystanders ignored her plight — have opened a searing debate in China over whether, in the race to get rich, the country might have lost its moral bearings.

The little girl, Yueyue, who was critically injured and remains in a coma, was run over last Thursday by two vehicles as a gruesome video recording captured 18 people walking or driving by who did not intervene. What most shocked many was that this was just the latest example of Chinese passersby who declined to help others in distress.

At the West Lake UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Zhejiang province last week, an unidentified woman, reportedly an American tourist, jumped into the water to rescue a woman who was drowning, possibly attempting suicide. Internet chat sites immediately lighted up with questions about why a foreigner intervened, while no Chinese would.

The reason most often given is that recently in China, bystanders who did intervene to help others have found themselves accused of wrongdoing. In August, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, a bus driver named Yin Hongbing stopped to help an elderly woman who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver. But until he was vindicated by surveillance videos, Yin was the one accused of hitting the woman.

There have also been several cases of passersby stopping to help elderly people who had fallen, or were pushed, and who then were sued by the victims or were arrested. The thinking here is: They must have been responsible or they would not have stopped to help.

It did not help matters that the Health Ministry in September issued new “Good Samaritan” guidelines that essentially warn passersby not to rush to help elderly people on the ground, but to first ascertain whether they are conscious and then wait for trained medical personnel to arrive.

One Internet user, in a comment posted after the West Lake incident, wrote: “That tourist was too impulsive. She didn’t know that in China, kind people who save others are often accused of being the perpetrator. The next time you run into someone who was hit by a car, you need to be careful.”