A video showing a man being forcibly dragged along the floor of a United Airlines aircraft has provoked anger among viewers in China.
Many commenters called for a boycott of United, accusing the airline of discriminating against the passenger because he is Chinese.
“It’s straight-up discrimination,” one widely shared post said, while another commenter said they would never “fly with United again in my lifetime.”
Joe Wong, a Chinese-born comedian who has performed multiple times on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” said on Weibo “many Chinese people feel they’ve been subject to discrimination.”
“They stay silent because they fear losing face,” he said. “That’s why the Western mainstream media and public don’t take discrimination against Asians seriously.”
China is the second largest aviation market in the world and a key focus for United, which claims it “operates more nonstop US-China flights, and to more cities in China, than any other airline.”
