A woman was seen holding her son down to hit and scold him on the street outside Gongyuanqian subway station in Guangzhou on September 9. You can see the video here.

The mother is yet to be identified and it is not yet known what the child did wrong, but a 3 and a half minute video of the incident was taken with a hand-held camera and picked up by news organizations such as Jiangxi Television.

It was suggested that punishing the boy so publicly may have been the mother’s idea of an effective way of disciplining him. It was also suggested that she is simply crazy.

China has a distinct history of corporal punishment withone of the most common forms being forcing a child to kneel.

There is also a history of standing around doing nothing while something bad happens in public, as we have told you before.