By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

TRIPOLI – Even from a remote perch in Libya, we heard about the horrific story making waves in China.

Last Thursday, a two-year-old girl crossing a street by herself in the city of Foshan in China’s southern Guangdong Province was hit by a car. The driver paused briefly as the girl lay between the front and rear wheels and then tore off, thumping her now-limp body again. 

Soon after, a second vehicle rolled over the girl, with the driver presumably unaware that a body lay on the road. The second driver also did not stop.

As if both these acts were not outrageous enough, 18 more people – on foot, on motorbikes, or on bicycles – passed by the girl, lying inert on the ground, and did nothing. Even a mother with her own child ignored the victim.

(Warning the video is very graphic, but it can seen here from a Chinese broadcast or here from the BBC).

It wasn’t until a female trash collector saw her and proceeded to pick the girl up that she was moved to the side of the road. The trash collector asked passers-by who the girl belonged to, and eventually the mother appeared, distraught, to claim her daughter named Yueyue.

All of this was caught on surveillance cameras. A clip was posted on China’s popular micro blog, Sina Weibo on Sunday, generating a huge outcry as netizens counted the number of people who glanced at the girl and ignored her plight – all in the seven minutes she lay on the road until the Good Samaritan carried her to safety.

The story, which has been a leading headline on all of China’s news sites, touched a nerve in the country, with many decrying the lack of moral standards and general disregard for fellow human beings.

One report quoted the first driver as saying, “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan."

Some news reports and online discussions made the point that civil behavior is not always rewarded in China. Many people fear they’re being subject to some sort of scam while others remember still a well-known case from 2006, when a man helped a woman who had fallen only to have her accuse him of causing the injury to begin with.  She filed a suit against him, in which the judge ruled the man wouldn’t have come to her aid had he not caused the fall.

State-run news agency Xinhua has reported both drivers of the vehicles that ran over the girl have been apprehended by police.

Yueyue, meanwhile, is in critical condition with serious brain injuries, breathing with the help of a ventilator. Her parents are asking eyewitnesses to come forward with any additional information.

The story of Yueyue’s hit-and-run stands in stark contrast to another story that picked up steam online over the weekend.

Last Friday afternoon, a woman fell into a scenic tourist lake in Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern province of Zhejiang. A Western woman who was walking by saw the Chinese woman struggling and quickly jumped into West Lake to save her. 

After swimming back to shore, the foreigner dragged her onto the bank. The victim remained conscious and appeared out of danger. Police turned up ten minutes later, and the Western woman left quietly. Several websites reported she was American.

What was notable in this instance was the response of those who read the story online.

In addition to giving the rescuer high praise (“That American girl is great, she has a beautiful character”), people also made unfavorable comparisons to Chinese behavior:

“According to Chinese laws and regulations, if she hadn’t pushed the girl into the water, why ever would she save her?”

Thanks to China Digital Times for the translations.

Adrienne Mong is NBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is on assignment in Libya.

BEIJING – China has welcomed millions of eager new drivers onto its increasingly congested roads in the last few years.

None appear as young as this young whippersnapper.

Ever-popular China blog, Shanghaiist, pointed us toward this disturbing video of what appears to be a young girl around the age of 4 or 5 casually driving a small sedan down the streets of a Chinese city.

Even more surprising though is the fact that she is apparently accompanied by two adults – presumably her parents – who encourage her as she navigates early morning traffic (the clock at one point shows 7:00 a.m.).     

“Drive safely,” says the woman holding the camera at the beginning of the clip to the young girl as she starts down the street, her head barely reaching over the wheel. Later, about 40 seconds in to the video clip, the young girl brightly notes that the “flowers are starting to bloom” as she passes a large SUV before a man in the back reminds her again to drive carefully and pay attention to the road.

Later about 1:05 into the clip, the bubbly girl actually makes a fairly deft pass around a car in front of them that is waiting at a stoplight to make a left turn.

The question of how this young girl’s legs were able to reach the gas and brake pedals is answered at the end of the clip when the girl stops the car and a man comes around and appears to remove some sort of extension pedals from beneath the driver’s area.

Understandably, the video created instant outrage among netizens in China. “We need to prosecute this little girl’s parents for endangering public safety!” called out one user of the popular Chinese video site, Youku. Another called upon the now legendary searching prowess of Chinese web users – known colloquially as the “human flesh search engine” – to be employed to search for the parents, saying “I demand a human flesh search! Punish these brain damaged parents!”

However, some users were impressed with her adept driving skills and her coolness on the road, a trait not always apparent on China’s modern roadways. “Her driving skills are good and it seems that she likes driving,” said another user before continuing, “maybe in the future she can keep learning about driving a car, but now this is very unsafe and way irresponsible.”

Our sentiments exactly.