据《南华早报》报道：5日，美国使馆签证处在微博发布“美国驻华大使馆的学生签证申请服务已经阶段性恢复”的消息。微博配发的视频显示一只小狗从围栏里爬出来，并写道：“春暖花开，你是不是像这只狗狗一样，迫不及待想出去玩耍了呢？

”美国使馆签证处5日发布的微博，在引发批评后已删除

美国使馆将申请签证的中国学生比作“迫不及待想出去玩耍的狗狗”，激怒了中国网友。报道称，很多网友认为，这一比喻带有贬义和种族主义色彩，或是在嘲笑中国学生。

美国驻华大使馆 资料图

很快，美国使馆签证处删除了这条微博。

据《南华早报》报道，美国驻华大使馆一名发言人6日对此事做出解释，并向被冒犯的人道歉。

对此，美国驻华大使馆一名发言人解释称，微博本意是轻松幽默的，“对所有中国人都怀有最深敬意，包括中国学生。如果有人被冒犯，我们为此道歉，那绝非我们的本意。”（We have the utmost respect for all Chinese people, certainly including Chinese students. We apologize if anyone was offended. That was certainly not our intention.）

发言人称，“我们对所有中国人都怀有最深敬意，包括中国学生。如果有人被冒犯，我们为此道歉，那绝非我们的本意。”对于此事，也有网民认为，中美传统文化对待狗的态度不同。在大多数的中国习惯语中，“狗”这个字是含贬义的，例如“狗仗人势”“狐朋狗友”“狼心狗肺”等。然而在美国文化中，狗是人类最好的朋友。

另有部分网民认为，虽然这可能是出于文化差异，但无论如何，美国使馆签证处作为面向华人的机构，在中国发文，就应该先研究一下中国文化。否则不管是什么原因而忽视了这种文化差异造成“误会”，都存在无可推脱的责任。

原文：

‘Are You Like This Doggy?’ U.S. Embassy Asked Chinese Students. It Backfired.

The New York Times

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing had good news to share: Student visa applications for Chinese nationals were resuming after a yearlong hiatus.

“Spring has come and the flowers are in bloom,” the embassy wrote in a Chinese-language social media post on Wednesday that included a video of a dog trying to jump over a fence. “Are you like this doggy who can’t wait to go out and play?”

It backfired, big time.

The post on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China, could be read as a ham-handed attempt to be cute. It set off criticism — and accusations of racism.

The embassy quickly removed the post and apologized, but the damage was done.

Some Weibo users wrote that the U.S. State Department had deliberately tried to insult Chinese students by likening them to dogs. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese tabloid, piled on, aggregating criticism of the post and criticizing former President Donald J. Trump’s visa policies.

Early last year, Mr. Trump imposed restrictions on travelers from China, including students, prompting criticism from Beijing. The Weibo post on Wednesday by the U.S. Embassy’s consular section announced that student applications had resumed under President Biden’s administration.

Not everyone who criticized the embassy’s post in China expressed full-throated outrage. Some Weibo users said that they were more disappointed than angry, adding that the post was tone deaf rather than deliberately malicious.

“There was no need for the Weibo post to include that line about the dog,” said Susan Chen, a student from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong who returned to China last year after starting a master’s program in Connecticut. “It could have simply said ‘Spring has come and the flowers are in bloom, come get the visa.’”

A spokesperson for the embassy said on Thursday that the United States had the utmost respect for all Chinese people and that the social media post was meant to be “lighthearted and humorous.” The spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under embassy rules, said staff members took down the post as soon as it became clear that many Chinese people saw the message differently.

About a million international students enroll in American universities every year. More than a third were from China in the 2019-2020 academic year, according to data compiled by the Institute of International Education.

But experts say that universities in the United States and other English-speaking countries could lose billions of dollars in the coming years because of travel restrictions and anger among Chinese students and parents about what they see as a permissive attitude toward public health during the pandemic.

Last year, the Trump administration abandoned a plan to strip international college students of their visas if they did not attend at least some classes in person. Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attorneys general of 20 states had sued over the proposed policy, saying it was reckless, cruel and senseless.