Old video from 2018 falsely relates to recent news of China-Taiwan. Here are the facts

Chinese President Xi Jinping called this week for troops to strengthen their preparedness for war, the Chinese state media reported on Monday, October 21, 2024, days after Beijing staged large-scale military drills around Taiwan. Amid this, a video is making rounds on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) showing some visuals of Chinese troops lined up and Xi Jinping delivering a speech. Users are sharing this video and associating it with the recent news of him directing the military to prepare for war just days after Beijing had staged large-scale military drills around the borders of Taiwan.

Taking to X, a user, Ankit Kumar Awasthi, wrote: “Why would China lag behind? Chinese President Xi Jinping has also asked his army to be ready for war. It seems that China is now in the mood to take action regarding Taiwan.” (Translated in English)

Fact-check

The DFRAC team investigated the above viral video. We converted the video into some keyframes and reverse-searched them on Google, leading us to a similar one available on the Guardian YouTube channel since January 2018. The video’s caption read: “Chinese army puts on a show of military might for Xi Jinping.”

As per the video’s description: “China’s president addresses 7,000 service personnel as the country starts a fresh round of training in Hebei province, just outside Beijing. Xi stressed the importance of real-combat training and winning wars.”

Moreover, we found a report published by The Guardian six years back. The report featuring some screengrabs from the above viral video and cited that speaking at a military assembly in the northern province of Hebei, Xi told the armed forces to be “capable of combat and sure to win” in a move designed to bolster his political standing.

Conclusion

It is clear from DFRAC’s fact-check that the above-shared video has been misleadingly shared on X. It dates back to 2018 and is not a recent one.
Analysis: Misleading