On New Year's Day, China Daily posted four of photos on its microblog, showing how littered New York's Times Square was after its year-end celebration. The post attracted 3,000 comments and 14,000 retweets. Among the retweeters was People's Daily, which drew 9,000 comments and 17,000 retweets of its own.

元旦那天，《中國日報》官方微博發布了四張照片。照片里的紐約時代廣場垃圾遍地，是前一夜人們新年狂歡后留下的。這條微博收到了3000條評論，被轉發14000次。其中人民日報也轉發了這條微博，收到了9000條評論，被轉發17000次。

China Daily's post was an oblique comment on the opinion that only Chinese show no respect for public sanitation. In a follow-up post, it added: "As the human flow for such fetes grows year by year, it becomes a common challenge for metropolises the world over for effective management of public spaces and its order and security while facing a sudden huge influx of visitors. We have paid a high price. But, in this age of global communication and traffic, it is ridiculous to discuss the issue in terms of racial quality."

只有中國人不注重公共衛生——中國日報的微博正是對這種看法的一種無聲辯駁。中國日報在后續發布的微博中補充道：“隨著狂歡規模年復一年增加，如何在人群密度陡然增大時，實施有效的公共區域管理以保障安全、維持秩序，是大都市集體面臨的難題，也是已讓我們付出慘重代價的新挑戰。無論如何，國界逐漸消失、人員全球交流的時代，以膚色種族論素質是顯而易見的愚蠢。”

The "high price" refers to the stampede in Shanghai on New Year's Eve in which 36 people died. "Racial quality" is a euphemism some critics assign to the inferiority of their compatriots when it comes to the less-than-desirable behavior in the public environment, such as littering, jostling and jumping the line.

“沉重的代價”指的是新年前夜發生在上海的踩踏事件，導致36人身亡。“民族素質”是一種委婉的說法。當提及社會地位較低的國人們在公共場合的不令人滿意的行為時，如亂丟垃圾、擁擠推搡和插隊等，一些評論家就會開始大談民族素質問題。

It may not represent the mainstream voice of China, but there has always been an undercurrent of racism in China - against Chinese ourselves. Only in China would such a bad thing happen because Chinese are selfish, undereducated, scheming or too trustful, among other bad qualities, goes the argument.

這并不代表中國的主流聲音，但中國總有一股民族偏見的暗流，詆毀我們中國人自己。他們認為，只有在中國才會發生如此糟糕的事情，因為中國人太自私，受教育程度低，善耍詭計，容易輕信別人。

This kind of statement derives from at least two sources: One is the tendency to blame a whole village for something done by an individual. A report of a serial killer would elicit a wave of responses saying that only a place so vile would spawn a creature like this. And a second possible source is the critical self-evaluation of scholars who scrutinize China's cultural soil for elements holding back its progress.

這種說法的出現有兩個原因：其中一個就是人們總愛用一個人干的壞事去責備整個村子的人。如果報道說某地出現了連環殺手，人們就會臆斷只有罪惡充盈的地方才會造就這么一個殺人惡魔。另一個可能的原因就是，一些學者們想要通過細察中國文化土壤來找到阻礙中國進步的因素，他們希望通過嚴格的自我審視來達到鞭策進步的目的。

The problem is, online denizens tend to accept the academic conclusions without delving into detailed analysis. The urge to generalize is so tempting and fits so neatly into the fast-food atmosphere of Internet expression that few have the patience to go through the travail of supporting one's arguments with evidence or rationalization. Online, the world is either black or white, with no room for shades of gray.

問題是，網民們傾向于不加深入分析便接受這種學術論斷。如此以偏概全的見解很是吸引人，也很符合網絡言論快餐式的氛圍，因而很少有人會有耐心去思考它是否能找到證據支撐，它背后的邏輯是否講得通。網絡世界非黑即白，沒有灰色地帶可言。

That goes for both China and the United States as topics of contention. Especially China and the US - two countries used as points of reference for political grandstanding. If you are pro-China, you must be anti-America; and vice versa, or so some believe. It has become so simplistic, partly because of the 140-character limit of most arguments, that the best parts of a public discourse, the parts that involve new information or factual nuances, tend to be left out or ignored.

對于中美間極具爭議性的話題而言也是如此。尤其是中國和美國——它們常常被放在政治秀中對立的兩端。如果你支持中國，你就一定反美國；反之亦然，至少一些人是這樣認為的。這種看法把復雜問題過于簡單化，而其中部分原因是微博有140字的字數限制，公眾話語中最精華的部分，那些包含新的信息和事實細節的部分就可能被省略或忽略掉了。