A video showing a little girl cruelly beating her younger cousin with her father's encouragement is rapidly gaining Internet hits and sparking a debate on family education among netizens.

Still images of the video shot by Lan Jianguo in Cangzhou city, North China's Hebei province, July 11, 2011. [Photo/hebnews.cn]

The video was shot Monday by the girl's father, Lan Jianguo, in Cangzhou city, North China's Hebei province, the local news portal hebnews.cn reported.

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In the video, after a fierce fight, the boy was taken to the ground and kicked by the girl, while Lan just stood aside and encouraged the two children to fight. Lan assured a woman who came to stop the fighting, saying that it was fine and the children often fought in this manner.

Lan told the hebnews.cn reporter that the boy was his nephew and he wanted to teach him how to defend his dignity from childhood. Lan said he applied the rule of "natural selection and survival of the fittest" to educate the children, to ensure they understood they must dare to fight back against bullies in their lives, as he used to be bullied by others during his childhood and later experienced hardships in his career.

Lan said he uploaded the video to the Internet in order to initiate discussion among netizens and he was surprised people were just focusing on its brutality.

Surprisingly, the boy's mother, Lan's elder sister, had no objection to the fight. She agreed with Lan's education method and believed that the fight changed her son's cowardly personality and now his classmates showed him more respect.