China’s Approach to the George Floyd Protests

On May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes. In a widely circulated video of the murder, Floyd gasps “I can’t breathe.” The casual cruelty on display in the video, coming after a constant stream of similar stories in which Black Americans die at the hands of police officers, sparked a massive protest movement across the United States.

On May 30, U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus posted a tweet urging “Freedom loving people around the world” to “hold to account the Chinese Communist Party, which has flagrantly broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong.” Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responded with her own tweet, just three words long: “I can’t breathe.”

Hua’s tweet inspired a thousand op-eds on how China was capitalizing on the domestic unrest in the United States.

Many argue that the racial tensions the United States are a victory for Beijing, a sentiment epitomized by Hua’s taunting tweet. But in truth, the protests are a double-edged sword for Chinese propaganda purposes. Of course China relishes any opportunity to reiterate its favorite talking point: that the United States has its own human rights problems, and thus any criticisms of China’s abuses – whether cracking down on protesters in Hong Kong or detaining Muslims in Xinjiang – are invalid. But at the same time, drawing attention to the thousands of protesters filling the streets in America could raise uncomfortable questions about why similar gatherings are impossible in China.

In that sense, the protests reveal both the worst and the best of U.S. democracy. The protests, under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement, reveal that the notion of equal rights in the United States has always been a convenient fiction. Since its founding, and indeed before, the country has been rife with social ills tied to the structural devaluing of minorities, especially Black Americans. But at the same time, the protests also reveal a strength of U.S. democracy: There is an opportunity for people to seek change, whether by taking to the streets, lobbying legislators, or running for public office.

And this grassroots movement demanding social change is gaining traction. Setting aside the wave of support from celebrities, major corporations, and editorials in major papers, politicians are taking up the cause as well. On June 16, President Donald Trump, who pledged early on to “deploy the United States military” against protesters to restore order, signed an executive order encouraging police reforms. Trump has often been accused of racism himself, but even he was forced into action (albeit limited) by people taking to the streets. Clearly, the protests are having a political impact.

This is the source of China’s dilemma when it comes to using the U.S. social justice movement for its own propaganda purposes.

Beijing does not want to inspire similar movements at home, and it does not want to remind its citizens that in other countries, ordinary people can join forces to demand changes from their government. When a reporter asked Hua, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, if Chinese people would be encouraged to join in the now-global Black Lives Matter protests, Hua was less eager to signal-boost Floyd’s desperate call for help. Instead, she dodged the question, saying, “China also expressed our position that we oppose all forms of racial discrimination.”

Indeed, the Chinese official response to the U.S. protests – both in Foreign Ministry statements and state-run media – has been complicated. As David Bandurski noted for the China Media Project, domestic media outlets have not devoted much attention to the subject:

[P]arty-state media in China, both central and provincial, have not dealt very loudly with the U.S. protests. This is noticeable especially in the case of newspapers across the country, which have not prominently reported the news, and have tended to avoid images of the protests, especially images depicting more violent acts.

The goal, Bandurski hypothesizes, is to avoid drawing uncomfortable comparisons to Hong Kong and, more generally, the possibility of activism within China. There has been more coverage online, especially on social media, but this lacks the official imprimatur of the print editions of state mouthpieces. 

China’s state-run English language media, which is meant for an overseas audience, has paid more attention to the protests. This drives home the idea that Beijing does not want to draw unnecessary attention within China to the U.S. protests but does seek to use them to score points abroad.

One English-language commentary from People’s Daily tried to thread the needle between criticizing U.S. human rights and denouncing protests in China by insisting that “the essence of what happened in Hong Kong is different from the anti-racism protests in America.” The article argued that “The Hong Kong protests aimed to divide Hong Kong from China, which is something no country would tolerate,” while the U.S. protests are the result of “a true crisis in democracy and human rights.” By the same logic, the Hong Kong protests are dismissed as foreign-funded and instigated, while protests in the United States are seen as authentic expressions of grassroots anger.

It’s not a very convincing argument, which probably explains why China prefers to avoid discussing the merits of the protests at length. Instead, the vast majority of Chinese official statements on the Black Lives Matter movement focus on “hypocrisy” of the United States’ human rights advocacy. The unspoken idea underpinning this narrative is that the U.S. record on democracy and human rights must be perfect for Washington to criticize anything about China.

Thus Chinese spokespeople tend to only address the protests as a way of responding to U.S. criticisms of China. As discussed above, Hua’s much-cited Twitter invocation of Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” came in response to a U.S. State Department tweet on Hong Kong. A more official comment from Hua in a press conference on June 8 – “equal rights is still a dream for ethnic minorities in the U.S., a country where serious systemic racism still exists” – was in answer to Pompeo’s remark that the CCP was using the protests for its own propaganda.

Hua gave another comment on June 11 in response to the U.S. State Department issuing its annual Report on International Religious Freedom, which was not kind to China. Her statement perhaps best encapsulates the role of the protests in China’s official narrative: “There are mass protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, which in itself reveals deep-rooted problems. Instead of reflecting on it, the U.S. still points the finger at China. Why on earth does it feel so entitled to do so?”

China may be attempting to leverage the U.S. protests for its own interests, but it has no desire to become a defender of human rights. Instead, China’s line is easy to grasp: if the United States stays out of our affairs, we’ll stop talking about its problems. That explains why Chinese state media has been mostly silent on the issue in print and Chinese-language outlets, but far more vocal in comments designed for a foreign audience. Overemphasizing a foreign protest movement to its citizens at home is a dangerous game for the Chinese Communist Party to play.