Chinese army general under fire for son's violence

A Chinese army general has apologised for his son's brutal beating of a couple and offered compensation, state media said Friday, in the latest scandal involving the so-called "rich second generation". The case, which has sparked widespread outrage, is reminiscent of a high-profile scandal last year, when the son of a top police officer tried to use his father's status to escape a deadly car accident he had caused.
According to the official Global Times paper, police detained Li Tianyi, 15, Tuesday in Beijing after witnesses said he and a friend leapt from their sports cars and beat a man and woman for three minutes while their son looked on. Li reportedly has no driving licence and his car, a customised BMW coupe, had no licence plate. But a lawyer told the English-language daily that he would not be charged because he was not yet 16 years old.
The woman who was beaten up by Li and the other boy, surnamed Su, told the newspaper that her husband had to have nine stitches to his forehead and two to the back of his head, and that he suffered wounds to his nose and right eye. General Li Shuangjiang, 72, a famous singer and music department dean at the Beijing-based PLA Academy of Arts, apologised for his son's actions.
"As the father, I bear the responsibility for my son's behaviour. I'm so sorry that I'd rather now be beaten by you," he was quoted as saying. "I will not condone my son's faults, and there will be a settlement." Police in Beijing's Haidian district, where the incident occurred, were not immediately available for comment.
Witnesses said that Li and Su beat up the couple in what appeared to be an act of road rage. "Who will dare call the police?" they shouted to stunned onlookers before trying to flee the scene. They were stopped by local residents, the report said. The incident has sparked lightning-fast online calls to punish Li, amid disgust over what some see as the brazen high-handedness of top officials and their families. One user of Sina Weibo, China's most popular Twitter-like microblog - which had more than 150,000 messages about the incident - hit out at the general.