George Floyd, an African-American from Minnesota, died shortly after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. His last words, “I can’t breathe,” are now being echoed around the world as people protest against his death.
They are also being repeated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials as they mock a lack of human rights in the United States. However, many Chinese netizens have expressed that they can’t breathe any better either under CCP’s iron-fisted rule.
On May 25, George Floyd died of police brutality in Minnesota. The spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, mocked the United States by posting “I can’t breathe” on her Twitter and, at the same time, expressing her disapproval of the U.S. spokesperson of the Department of State Morgan Ortagus’s support of Hong Kong’s protesters.
Chinese netizens were quick to criticize Hua, with one saying: “When Xu Chun-He who appealed in Heilongjiang was beaten to death by the police, Hua Chunying breathed well. When 3 Chinese businessmen were murdered in Zambia, Hua could still breathe. When the people of Wuhan died from the virus because of the cover-up done by the CCP, she could still breathe with no problems. Now that the Americans are rioting and looting in protests, she started to pretend that she can’t breathe.”
A lot of Chinese people have expressed to NTD that they are being severely oppressed and persecuted by the CCP in their daily lives to a point where they “can no longer breathe.”
Hu Jian-Guo, a resident of Shanghai, said: “I can’t breathe at all. I am living in terror every single day.
“A few days ago, more than 30 people watched me all day for more than 20 days. I really can’t breathe. I have friends around me who can’t breathe either, and many of them don’t even have food and shelter.”
Mr. Zhang from Wuhan City shared the same sentiment.
He said: “We can’t breathe, we can’t even say anything and if we do, the police come and find us. The families of those who died of the Wuhan pneumonia cannot even speak out. They wanted to hold the government accountable but were not allowed to hold up signs or go out of their houses.
So, can the Wuhan people breathe? Right now, people in Wuhan have no food to eat. Why isn’t there anyone stepping in to help?”
Ms. Wei from Chongqing expressed that she is not the only person being oppressed by the CCP. Many people who have been petitioning for twenty or thirty years suffer even more immense pain. They are not allowed to post any videos and if they do, they will be punished.
Ms. Wei continued saying: “You see, so many people cannot breathe. The CCP only promotes the good, not their bad [deeds]. They do not allow us to post anything that is not good for them. Just take the incident that happened in Wuhan, so many people have died, why did they not report anything?”
In a video that is circulating online, a female host of CCTV, the CCP’s mouthpiece, slammed the so-called racism and the U.S. government for the death of Floyd and claimed that U.S. officials should “apologize” to the American people.
However, what is ironic is that netizens have edited the video and added a live recording of CCP police and city officials beating up civilians. Many netizens criticized the CCP and asked if it only looks outward, not inward.
Mr. Zhang expressed: “In China, people die of beating every single day. The deaths of a few people mean nothing in China. No one reports when people die from being beaten up, but it is a big deal when it happens in the U.S. It gets reported over and over.”
Netizens criticize the state media for repeating many reports on Floyd’s death.
“Hua Chunying posted “I can’t breathe” on Twitter, but nobody said anything about the deaths of three Chinese people in Africa,” they said. “It was reported once and over, and Hua Chunying did not come out and said ‘I can’t breathe.’
“Three Chinese people died, wasn’t she supposed to be suffocating?”
Netizens also posted pictures highlighting the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre and of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests in response to Hua, asking: “Can the Chinese people breathe? Can Hong Kong people breathe?”
Chinese citizen, Hu Jian-Guo, said that the intent of the CCP’s reporting on Floyd is to convince the Chinese people that there are no human rights in the United States. But he said that the biased reporting shows that the CCP actually feels nothing for the many Chinese people who have died.
He added: “All news reports in China are fake. You see, tens of millions of people died from natural disasters in the past three years, and so many students died from machine guns, shooting, and being run over by tanks on June 4, 1989. Does the CCP dare to report the real images? No, it does not.”
Hu said, “The Americans have the right to go on the streets and make their voices heard, and also have the right to collect evidence on the scene. But the Chinese people do not.
Human rights activist and lawyer in China, Teng Biao, indicated in a post on Twitter that the difference is the result of two different political systems in two countries.
In China, the police are used to suppress the people, but in the United States, the police support the rational demands of the people, he said.
Hu Jian-Guo suggested that the U.S. should tear down the CCP’s firewall and let the Chinese people know the truth and breathe freely. That way, the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party will ultimately end, he said.
