After Chinese language nationwide flags had been raised at a competition in Malaysia, prompting a backlash from Malay nationalists, a picture of a doctored information article circulated on-line that falsely claimed China was contemplating retracting investments within the Southeast Asian nation’s northern Kedah state. AFP discovered the article was manipulated to mimic the South China Morning Put up, a Hong Kong-based newspaper. As of November 11, 2024, there have been no official studies that China was set to retract funding in Kedah.
The fabricated article — shared in a Fb publish on October 28, 2024 — was created underneath the banner of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Put up (SCMP) newspaper.
The Malay-language publish stated individuals in Malaysia’s northern Kedah state and jap Kelantan state weren’t “determined for funding from communist China”.
Kedah introduced in March that it was poised to obtain 50 billion ringgit ($1.1 billion) value of funding from eight Chinese language firms (archived hyperlink).
“China is contemplating to tug out their funding in Kedah”, learn the purported article’s headline, above a picture of Chinese language President Xi Jinping and officers inspecting army gear.
The textual content beneath the picture learn: “Beijing: Following an altercation involving the incident of China flag in Malaysia, Xi Jinping is reportedly calling a number of firms for a gathering.”
The identical picture was additionally shared on Fb right here, right here, and right here, in addition to on X and WhatsApp.
It surfaced after Chinese language nationals attending a competition in Malaysia’s northwest Perak state on October 24 waved China’s nationwide flag on the occasion, triggering a backlash from Malay nationalists who’re against what they see as rising Chinese language affect within the Southeast Asian nation (archived hyperlinks right here and right here).
China has been Malaysia’s greatest buying and selling companion for the previous 15 years, and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has sought a detailed and constructive relationship with Beijing (archived hyperlink). Anwar visited China in early November to additional enhance financial ties, his third journey since taking workplace in 2022.
Nonetheless, SCMP informed AFP on October 31 that the circulating picture was a “faux information story imitating” the publication.
It had not printed any such article about China pulling investments from Malaysia as of November 11, 2024.
Doctored article
A reverse picture search on Google led to the identical picture of Xi printed in different SCMP articles (right here and right here), which credited it to state broadcaster CCTV (archived hyperlinks right here and right here).
Nonetheless, the structure of those articles differed from the purported report that circulated on-line.
The font, placement and alignment of the headline and standfirst within the doctored report didn’t match the structure of the articles on the SCMP web site.
Under is a screenshot comparability between the falsely shared report (left) and an article on the SCMP’s homepage (proper):
