Outrage in China over United Airlines’s treatment of passenger

Chinese social media exploded in anger after a video posted online showed the forcible removal of a Chinese passenger from a United Airlines flight by security officers.

In a video taken by Audra Bridges, who was on board the flight from Chicago to Louisville, the man is forcibly dragged by security officers, banging his face as he is pulled along. The video has been watched more than 14 million times and shared 187,000 times on Facebook.

The middle-aged man insisted he was a doctor who had patients to treat the next day, and he screamed loudly as he was dragged out of his window seat to make way for United Airlines personnel after the flight was overbooked.

Even though Facebook is banned in China, the video quickly made its way to the dominant social media in China, the micro-blogging site Weibo, where it has been watched more than 100 million times, and the chat app WeChat.

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"United Airlines of the United States has raised the anger of Chinese people, of Asian people . . . and they are being scolded by people from around the world," the Dongguan Communist Youth League said in a Weibo posting.

United Airlines issued an official apology for the overbooking after the incident.

In its report on the incident, the Communist Party's official organ People's Daily stressed how an Asian passenger was involved.

“An Asian male passenger on an overbooked United flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was ripped out of his seat by uniformed officers and dragged down the aisle on his back like luggage, as several horrified passengers captured footage of his bloodied face on their phones. The incident sparked a huge outcry online,” the report said.

#chineselivesmatters

One posting by a commentator called DC339SJ urged a federal investigation into the incident. While it did not mention racism specifically, it did have the hashtag #chineselivesmatters.

One fellow passenger, Tyler Bridges, told the Washington Post that the man had said: "I'm being selected because I'm Chinese."

“This is rogue law enforcement, injuring a Chinese person and tragically dragging them down the plane,” said another commentator.

Another Weibo user named Wrh wrote: “United forced forced passengers off the plane, one of them an Asian doctor. He said he was a doctor and had to see patients next day. He was selected more or less because he was Chinese. Shame on United Airlines.”

According to United's website, the airline operates more non-stop US flights to China than any other airline, to cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi'an, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It began flights to China in 1986.

One former passenger called Bella wrote an angry post on Weibo saying: “Do not fly United Airlines, repeat, do not fly United Airlines. Never fly United Airlines”.

In March last year, Virgin Airlines was attacked by China’s online citizenry after a Chinese passenger claimed she was racially abused and sworn at by another traveller on a flight from London to Shanghai and that the flight crew did nothing to help her.