Pang Ying:Hello, I’m Pang Ying. Welcome to the debate in Episode 27 of Think Like a Debater. Our new motion is: Should euthanasia be legalized? Ms. Zhan argues yes; I argue no. The affirmative begins.

Zhan Qingyun:Thank you, Chair Pang. Hello, everyone.

This motion is difficult. I am neither a frontline medical worker nor someone who has suffered or cared for serious illness. The painful stories I read cannot be fully understood without living them, so please forgive my limitations.

We should discuss present-day China, a vast country with major regional differences. Any policy would begin with local pilots and expand gradually.

This debate has no immediate policy effect. Legislators have proposed ‘death with dignity’ since 1994, yet health authorities still cite lack of consensus and legal and ethical risks.

I am not demanding nationwide legalization tomorrow. I recognize the practical difficulties, but examining the positive meaning of advocating legalization is now worthwhile.

Because this is policy debate, Ms. Pang asked me to be concrete instead of reciting poetry. Still, I’ll recommend a novel as an opening Easter egg.

The Death Caregiver is a Japanese social mystery about aging and low birthrates. It imagines one worker supporting one older person in forty years. Its social meaning matters more than suspense, so I will spoil it.

A single mother escapes domestic violence and lives with her mother and son. Her mother develops dementia and paralysis, forcing her to quit full-time work. As the illness worsens, care receives only fear, insults, and blows. Expenses, lost income, and childcare push her toward collapse.

Helping her mother use the toilet one day, she is no longer recognized. The mother becomes incontinent; the frightened grandson runs in and falls in the waste. The daughter breaks down and hits him, then sees his swollen face and feels she has become someone else.

After work the next day, she finds her mother dead.Assuming a natural death, her first feeling is rescue and release, followed by the loss that no one will answer when she calls ‘Mother.’

Later a prosecutor says someone entered and killed her mother by injection. She does not want to know, preferring to believe her mother died naturally after she fulfilled her duty.

Asked to speak as the victim’s family, she is led toward hatred of the killer. She honestly says her first feeling was deliverance.