A media outlet ran by the Communist Chinese government tweeted a political cartoon on Monday mocking the U.S. Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms on Independence Day.
The Chinese media outlet Xinhua News tweeted, “How a gun-happy nation spends its #FourthofJuly weekend,” with a pair of U.S. political figures sharing a toast “To freedom,” with a third gun-wielding figure adding “… of shooting!” The blood-splattered gun-wielding figure also danced by a gravestone marked “Death from firearm.”
While Twitter is officially banned to the Chinese general public, some Chinese politicians and state media outlets are permitted to use it to spread pro-Chinese government messaging and to share criticisms of other countries.
Chinese cultural ambassador Zhang Heqing shared Xinhua’s tweet, adding, “With gun violence happening almost every day, how much could the human rights be guaranteed? Can that also be called the so-called freedom?”
Xinhua’s political cartoon prompted dozens of critical responses.
One commenter took note of China’s official ban on the use of Twitter, tweeting, “TFW you come up with a sick burn against the U.S. that you know people back home are going to love, but then you realize they can’t see it because you’re an oppressive dictatorship that has banned twitter lest they should find out you’re an oppressive dictatorship.”
Conservative political commentator and former National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch tweeted photos taken after the violent clearing of protesters in Tiananmen Square by China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops on June 4, 1989, in an event known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Another Twitter user tweeted, “You unleashed COVID-19 into the world and this stupid meme is the best you could come up with?”
Another Twitter user tweeted a photo of hundreds of Uyghur detainees sitting in rows inside a barb-wire fenced compound. As of 2019, China is believed to have detained about 1.8 million ethnic minority Uyghurs in concentration camps throughout the Xinjiang region of western China.
Another user tweeted, “We’ve seen the alternative from the [Chinese Communist Party],” with a photo of Chinese officials lining up six men for an execution.
Xinhua’s tweet isn’t the first time Chinese officials have commented on gun rights in America. In September 2019, a Chinese government panel invited U.S. gun control advocates from the U.S. to discuss gun control efforts in the U.S. The Chinese government panel reportedly discussed supporting those gun control efforts in the U.S. but ultimately decided against it.
