Outrage over the violent removal of a passenger from a United Airlines flight swept across Asia on Wednesday, with Vietnamese internet users calling for a boycott of the company and China’s state-run media seizing on the episode as proof of the US’s hypocrisy over human rights.
The eviction of David Dao, a 69-year-old American doctor, from United Airlines Flight 3411 on Sunday night prompted a massive outpouring of indignation and criticism on social media in China after initial reports that he was Chinese.
By Wednesday afternoon a post about Dao’s treatment on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site, had been viewed more than 600m times.
More than 260,000 people weighed in with comments, the majority expressing disgust at what has been widely interpreted as an example of discrimination against Asians.
“Everybody should be equal. [America] shouts about equal rights but has done such dirty things,” wrote one Weibo user, under the name Yuan Tianweilaoshi.
Another called for Chinese travellers to shun United, which operates flights out of Chinese cities including Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Xi’an, because of Dao’s treatment. “Let’s boycott it together,” wrote Nasenmenghe.
Anger over the incident at O’Hare airport in Chicago, which helped wipe nearly $1bn (£800m) off the company’s value, spread to Vietnam on Wednesday after it was reported that Dao had been born in that country and had moved to the US in the 1970s.
“Watching this makes my blood boil, I’ll never fly United Airlines,” Anh Trang Khuya wrote on Facebook, Vietnam’s most popular social media platform, according to Reuters.
A petition started by a Chinese student demanding an investigation into the case has so far garnered more than 170,000 signatures.
“He was dragged off brutally and violently. Blood is visible on his face and body,” the petition stated. “We are calling [on] the federal government to launch an investigation into this incident.”
Writing in Foreign Policy, James Palmer said the episode had struck a chord in China because it played into long-standing grievances over perceived racism against the Chinese. “For a public that assumes anything bad that happens to a Chinese person overseas is because of racism, this was a lit match on a pile of kindling,” he wrote.
But China’s state-run media, always on the lookout for opportunities to needle the US over human rights, has also fanned the flames with a flurry of stories about the case.
“Barbaric behaviour!” exclaimed state broadcaster CCTV in a social media post that incorrectly identified Dao as a Chinese.
In an editorial, the Chinese-language edition of the Global Times tabloid claimed the incident exposed not just “management chaos” at the airline but the poor treatment often meted out to Asians by police in the US.
The People’s Daily, the Communist party’s official mouthpiece, criticised the “brutality” with which Dao had been removed from the plane and United’s “arrogant and cold-blooded” response.
In his article about China’s reaction to the episode, Palmer said there had also been “an unpleasant subtext to some of the accusations of racism” that followed Sunday’s incident.
“The immigrant Chinese community in the United States tends to blame its problems not on the white power structure but on the supposed favouritism shown to blacks … That attitude has spread to much of the Chinese public back home,” he wrote.
Such attitudes were apparent in some of the responses on Chinese social media, Palmer added. One recurrent comment was: “They would never have done this to a black person!”
A Hong Kong politician, Charles Mok, posted a video on his Facebook page showing him taking a pair of scissors to his United Airlines MileagePlus card.
“Good for you! I wouldn’t spend a dime on that company!” commented one follower.
Additional reporting by Wang Zhen
