BEIJING: The choking, assault and attempted kidnapping of a Chinese woman at a Beijing hotel in full view of security cameras and multiple passers-by has sparked a social media firestorm, with more than two billion views.

It is the latest in a series of flashpoint incidents in China where witnesses have stood by doing nothing, sparking debate about whether the country is turning into a society of bystanders.

A woman using the screen name “Wanwan” on Tuesday posted a video of surveillance footage showing her being assaulted by a man in the hallway of a Yitel hotel, an economy chain.

Her assailant choked her, pulled her hair and tried to abduct her while she shouted, “I don’t know you, let go of me!,” she said.

A hotel staff member who assumed that they were a couple having a fight observed them at close proximity for several minutes and asked them take their dispute elsewhere, but did not intervene, she added.

After a failed attempt to flee via the lifts, she was eventually rescued by a female passerby who came to her aid, the footage showed.

“The whole incident lasted five to six minutes, in a place entirely covered with surveillance cameras, yet not a single security or hotel management staff member came out to help me,” Wanwan lamented.

The most popular of numerous hashtags referring to the incident had accumulated over two billion viewings by Thursday afternoon on China’s Twitter-like Weibo — around 50 percent more than the number of people in the world’s most populous country.

It had over two million comments.

“When a man hits a woman, no matter whether they know each other or not and no matter what the reason or what the circumstances, you should always mediate and pull them apart if possible,” said one.