Video shows edited clip of French bridge, not example of substandard infrastructure in China

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 25, 2023 at 06:18
3 min read
By Sophia KONG, AFP Hong Kong

A video has been shared hundreds of times in social media posts that falsely claim it shows large chunks of concrete falling from a crumbling bridge in China. But the video in fact shows digitally altered footage of the world's tallest bridge, the Millau Viaduct in southern France. The creator of the video told AFP they had added special effects to the footage.

"Too terrifying! This is infrastructure in CCP's China. But the '50-cents' still say safety in China is not a concern at all!" reads the simplified-Chinese caption of a clip shared on Twitter here on July 18, 2023.

The "50-cents" refers to people in China that social media users suspect are paid to post patriotic comments online.

The clip, which has been shared more than 190 times, appears to show chunks of concrete falling from the underside of a tall bridge into the river below.

Screenshot of the false tweet, captured on July 24, 2023

The same nine-second clip was also shared elsewhere on Twitter here and on Gettr here with similar claims it showed a bridge in China.

Comments on the posts indicate that some people believed the clip was filmed in China, with some criticising the country's government.

"The CCP is great at bragging: the world's greatest and number one at infrastructure projects. After a few years, those projects will be exposed and cause untold levels of harm," one wrote.

Another said: "China's 'tofu dreg developments' have become infamous around the world."

Chinese social media users describe poorly constructed buildings in the country as "tofu dregs", likening their structural instability to the soft bean curd dish.

Building collapses are not rare in China, where lax building standards and breakneck urbanisations lead to constructions being thrown up in haste.

For example, outrage erupted after it emerged that 7,000 schools -- dubbed "tofu schools" -- were badly damaged by the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake that struck Sichuan province in May 2008, triggering accusations of shoddy construction, corner-cutting and possible corruption.

The clip being falsely shared in social media posts, however, does not show a crumbling bridge in China.

Edited footage

A reverse image search on Yandex using keyframes from the clip led to a similar video posted in an Instagram post here by "SouthLab", on April 5, 2021 (archived link).

The video's caption contains the tags "vfx", "specialeffects" and "cgi", indicating it was digitally altered.

The same post includes another video breaking down how the footage of the bridge was edited to make it appear as if it were crumbling.

Several other similar videos were uploaded on the Instagram page (archived link).

The same user also posted a similar video -- showing the crumbling bridge and a breakdown of how it was edited -- on their YouTube channel here (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video used in the false tweet (left), which has been flipped horizontally, and the video posted on the SouthLab YouTube channel (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video used in the false tweet (left) and the video posted on YouTube (right)

The video is titled "Making of VFX - Collapsing bridge", and its description says it was created using Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects and Mocha pro.

The person who runs SouthLab told AFP on July 21 they had created the video, and shot the footage in Millau, France.

"I am a VFX artist and I create videos like this adding special effects, so don't worry the bridge is fine!"

The bridge shown in the video corresponds to Google Street View imagery of the Millau Viaduct in southern France, which holds the Guinness World Record for world's tallest bridge (archived links here and here).

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