Organ donation advert from Chinese state media passed off as real-life incident

The one-and-half-minute video was shared on social media platform X on January 14, 2024.

It shows several people attempting to soothe a crying baby who calms down after being carried by a man wearing a black shirt.

"This clip shows a baby whose mother died while giving birth. The heart of the woman was donated to the man wearing black T-shirt," reads the Thai-language caption to the post.

"The child can recognise the mother's heartbeat," it goes on to say.

"This footage was filmed in Singapore and went viral quickly. It's priceless."

Text superimposed on the video makes a similar claim but adds it was filmed on "1/10/2023".

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A screenshot of the misleading post on X, taken January 19, 2024

The video has also been shared on Facebook, where it was viewed more than a million times, as well as on TikTok here, here and here.

Many comments under these posts indicate people thought the video depicts a real-life incident.

"I feel so bad for the baby who misses their mother's face. May the mother's soul rest in peace," one wrote.

"Such amazing love from mother's (sic)," another said.

Organ donation ad

A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found a matching video published by China's national television broadcaster CCTV on its verified Facebook page on June 13, 2017 (archived link).

The video's English caption reads: "Organ donation gives other the chance of life. This is amazing. Baby stops crying when held by a man who received the mother's heart in a transplant a few months ago."

The caption goes on to cite organ transplant statistics since China started its annual Organ Donation Day programme in 2010.

Near the end of the video, simplified Chinese text could be seen which read: "Love keeps the heart beating", "Organ donation" and "CCTV Advertising Management Center".

Below is a screenshot showing the Chinese text, highlighted by AFP:

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Screenshot of the video keyframe with Chinese text circled

The same video was earlier posted on CCTV's website on March 9, 2017 (archived link).

Wu Qiubin, credited as a producer for the video, told AFP it was filmed in China and is "fiction".

Further keyword searches found the advert won an award in 2017 at the ROI Festival, a Shanghai-based creativity award given to people in business industry.

A YouTube video posted on March 6, 2017 shares the same advert with title, "Touching Chinese organ donation commercial" (archived link).

The video's description credits the advert to an agency called "F5 Shanghai x DDB Shanghai".

A website called Digitaling also wrote about the video in March 2017, referring to it as "national public service advertisement" (archived link).

Multiple keyword searches did not find any Chinese report about a real-life incident of a baby recognising their mother's transplanted heart.