Video of Chinese expressways falsely shared as 'Indonesia's new toll road'

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 23, 2023 at 09:39
3 min read
By AFP Indonesia, AFP Hong Kong

A video of a pair of expressways has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times after it circulated with a false claim that it shows a highway project commissioned by Indonesian President Joko Widodo to link two cities on Sumatra island. The video was in fact taken in the Chinese province of Guizhou.

The clip was posted here on Facebook on January 28, 2023 and has been viewed more than 1,600 times.

The first half of the 28-second video shows a pair of tunnels and expressways in a mountainous landscape.

Text superimposed on the clip reads: "The tunnels of the Pekanbaru-Padang toll road are the longest tunnels that go through a mountain. Thanks, Uncle Jokowi," referring to the Indonesian president by his popular nickname.

"The tunnels of the Pekanbaru-Padang toll road are the longest tunnels that go through a mountain. It could only be built during the era of President Jokowi," says the post's Indonesian-language caption.

Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on February 17, 2023.

The second half of the video shows screenshots of local media reports in 2021 and 2018 about the toll road project between Pekanbaru in Riau province and Padang in West Sumatra province.

The 254-kilometre (157-mile) toll road is part of Jokowi's ambitious Trans Sumatra project, which seeks to build more than a dozen highways across Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The clip circulated weeks after Jokowi inaugurated a 30.9-kilometre (19.2-mile) Pekanbaru-Bangkinang toll road -- part of the Pekanbaru-Padang project -- on January 4, 2023, as reported here and here.

The same video has racked up more than 280,000 times after it was shared with a similar claim here, here and here on Facebook; as well as here on Twitter.

The clip also appeared in this July 2020 Facebook post alongside an English-language claim that it shows South Korean highways.

However, the claim is false.

Chinese expressways

A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found that the same highways, tunnels and scenery can be seen in this video, uploaded to YouTube on August 29, 2022.

The title of the YouTube video reads: "Expressways in Guizhou's mountainous area are made up entirely of either tunnels or bridges."

The same pair of tunnels can be seen from the eight-second mark, alongside simplified-Chinese text that reads: "Yuqing-Anlong Expressway Kaluo No. 1 tunnel".

The Yuqing-Anlong Expressway is located in China's southwestern province of Guizhou.

AFP found the actual location of the highway on Google Satellite View here.

The same features -- including a building with a tilted roof (highlighted in red), a hill that the tunnels go through (highlighted in blue) and the road bridges that continue past the hill (highlighted in yellow) -- can be seen.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the misleading video (top left), the YouTube video (top right) and the imagery from Google Satellite View (bottom):

Screenshot comparison of the misleading video (top left), the YouTube video (top right) and the imagery from Google Satellite View (bottom).

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