The latest Chinese government crackdown over offensive tweets had reached far outside its border. Some media outlets had also shared that the implications over the arrest of University of Minnesota students do not only raise the alarm for locals but might even have deeper implications for American businesses.

Freedom of speech had become increasingly tense in China, as a student from the University of Minnesota was sentenced to six months in prison over a humorous tweet involving the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

In today’s digital media, a simple tweet can land someone in jail.

Well, that’s what happened to 20-year-old Luo Daiqing, who was staying in his own hometown of Wuhan last July. In a statement to Fox News, the University of Minnesota student said that he had just become aware of the situation and had no additional information to share as of today.

According to a report from Axios, the Chinese government had released an official court document on November 5, 2019. The document alleged that in September and October of 2018, Daiqing posted more than 40 comments against the Chinese leader and shared indecent pictures of Xi Jinping using his own Twitter account.

Due to his actions, officials believed that he had “created a negative social impact” and cited that Daiqing was sentenced to six months in prison.

Some of the posts that the government was referring to are tweets featuring Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh. There were also images of Lawrence Limburger—a cartoon villain in the “Biker Mice from Mars” TV show, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Chinese leader. The problem is that these tweets were posted while Daiqing was still studying in Minnesota and within the comfort of the U.S. border.

The arrest had also garnered the attention of the American government, who is greatly concerned for Daiqing’s welfare. In a statement by U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the senator claimed that the arrest was an act of “ruthless and paranoid totalitarianism.” The full statement from Sasse follows:

“The Chinese Communist Party ought to release Luo Daiqing immediately, and the University of Minnesota ought to give him a full-ride scholarship. Don’t forget that the Chinese Communist Party has banned Twitter, so the only people who even saw these tweets were the goons charged with monitoring Chinese citizens while they’re enjoying freedom here in the United States. This is what ruthless and paranoid totalitarianism looks like.”

Axios also added that the event is a direct reflection of “dramatic escalation of the Chinese government’s attempts to shut down free speech abroad, and a global expansion.”

However, this is not the first time that China had made severe measures against those that are in the opposition. In fact, last year, China had punished the NBA after one of their team managers had expressed support for the Hong Kong protesters.

The NBA was torn between the financial incentives and the American values of democracy in which it strongly upholds. The NBA continued to believe in the freedom of speech and human rights. The punishment had also sparked an intense outrage among the American people and had even raised the alarm to corporate businesses. Because of China’s increasing censorship, every major American corporation that had ties with the foreign country is trying to asses the financial benefits and the risks involved.

As the Washington Post wrote in 2017: “Washington is waking up to the huge scope and scale of Chinese Communist Party influence operations inside the United States, which permeate American institutions of all kinds. China’s overriding goal is, at the least, to defend its authoritarian system from attack and at most to export it to the world at America’s expense.”