January 20 marks China's First Aid Day. Activities were held around the country to raise awareness about first aid, and the need for more automated external defibrillators, or AEDs.

A young man fainted at a subway station in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on January 3. After 10 minutes of CPR and an AED effort, he recovered consciousness and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Duan Chen, a station master at the Shenzhen subway, said: "When I found his lips had turned purple, and breath and pulse were getting weaker and he suffered cardiac arrest, I just performed CPR to save him."

For cardiac arrest, immediate first aid is key. The golden window is four minutes, and the key to first aid is the AED. It's a portable electronic device for life-threatening cardiac complications before professional medical practitioners arrive on the scene. But when the reporter walked around many places in Beijing, there was a lack of AEDs. When asking Jindi Plaza staff "Do you have AEDs?" the staff responded: "No, we don't need them." And the staff at Xidan Shopping Center said: "To be honest, the boss may not want it because it consts 20,000 yuan and this brings no economic benefits for him."

In China, less than 1 percent of adults know how to perform CPR. And at the end of 2018, there were only about 15,000 AEDs installed at medical institutions and public places such as gyms, airports and subways. In comparison, Japan has 986 AEDs per 100,000 people, and France has 180. Beijing has only 5. For cardiac arrest, an ambulance or AED is no guarantee of survival, but without them, death is almost certain.