If mom and wife both drowning, who will you save first? Tricky question appears in China' s National Judicial Exam (Xinhua/web)

BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- If your mother and girlfriend are both drowning at the same time, who will you save first? The similar tricky question that often put people in an embarassing dilemma was raised by authorities to test candidates in the China' s National Judicial Exam.

China' s Bar examination is intended to determine whether a candidate is qualified to be a lawyer or judge or practice law in the country.

In the exame, test makers only change the drowning scenario to "trapped in fire" . Rather than asking examees to choose, the exam paper asks a more professional question: If the man has the ability to save his mother but saves girlfriend instead, is the man committing a non-action crime?

The correct answer is: "No matter who you save first, it doesn' t constitute a crime," according to Xu Songlin, a criminal law professor from South China University of Technology.

Non-action crime refers to those acts where one is capable of but fail to fulfill his/her legal obligation, Xu explained

People' s lives are equal. Law provides that people are obliged to save next of kin including mother, but it doesn' t provide that they must save the next of kin when another person is also in danger at the same time, he added.