A MOTORIST in China allegedly hit a six-year-old girl by accident, and then returned to his car and hit her again, in the latest suspected murder of a hit-and-run victim, state press reports.

Saturday's accident in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, comes after a man was sentenced to death last month in China for fatally stabbing a woman after first hitting her with his car, the Global Times said.

The incidents, which often involve hit-and-run drivers, have led to hand-wringing over the moral standards in the nation, whose citizens have become increasingly brash following 30 years of booming economic growth.

The killing in Fuzhou occurred as numerous witnesses watched in shock. The unnamed driver, seeing he had hit the six-year-old girl, returned to his car and hit her again.

"He drove back, and ran the right front wheel over the girl again," the local Strait Metropolitan Daily quoted witness Chen Yi as saying.

"I was immediately so frightened that I closed my eyes. It was so horrible."

The girl was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, the report said. A police investigation is ongoing.

Last month, 21-year-old music student Yao Jiaxin was sentenced to death in the northern city of Xian after confessing to hitting a woman on a bicycle and then stabbing her to death after he got out of the car.

Yao said he killed her because that "peasant woman would be hard to deal with" in the aftermath of the accident, state press reports said.

Yao's case has sparked a national debate over China's "rich second generation," a group of youths raised during the boom whose morals have been called into question.

In January the son of a senior police official, 23-year-old Li Qiming, was sentenced to six years in prison after a hit-and-run.

In another incident, Tian Houbo, 21, was arrested for hitting a beggar on a roadside in southwest China's Chongqing city in December and then returning to the scene and running over her again with his truck, the Global Times said.

"Since I killed a beggar, I didn't think anyone would pay any attention to her," Tian was quoted as telling the Chongqing Morning Post yesterday.

"I was afraid of future trouble so I chose to kill her."