Old footage of Chinese fishing fleet recirculates after deadly boat incident

"Hundreds of fishing boats surrounded the Kinmen islands," reads the simplified Chinese caption of a Weibo post shared on February 18, 2024.

It goes on to falsely claim the Chinese fleet made it impossible for Taiwanese fishing boats to dock at or leave the islands. 

The 33-second video --  viewed more than 550,000 times -- shows clips of ships setting sail, along with two screenshots showing a large number of boats around the Kinmen islands, apparently taken from tracking site Vessel Finder (archived link).

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Screenshot of the false Weibo post, taken February 29, 2023.

The claim surfaced online days after the deaths of two Chinese nationals on February 14, 2024, in a chase by the Taiwanese coast guard near Kinmen -- a territory administered by Taipei but located just five kilometres (three miles) from the Chinese city of Xiamen.

Two weeks later, Taipei's defence ministry said it had detected 11 Chinese naval vessels around Taiwan -- more than the usual four to six spotted in a 24-hour window, and the highest so far this year.

The incident occurred against a backdrop of heightened tensions between China and Taiwan -- a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.

However, the video that circulated online -- including on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili and news aggregation site Sina -- was shared in a false context.

In response to the false posts, a spokesperson for Taiwan's fisheries agency told AFP on March 1 that there had been no reported cases of Chinese fishing vessels crossing the border to surround Taiwanese waters.

The spokesperson added the video shared online, which was created from two separate clips, was "misinformation".

Chinese fishing boats

Google reverse image and keyword searches found the first ten seconds of the video corresponded to a Douyin post published on September 1, 2023 about thousands of vessels travelling out to sea for the start of the fishing season in China (archived link).

The post's caption included the hashtags "Shandong life" and "Rizhao", a coastal city in China's eastern province (archived link).

The Douyin user included a watermark with the account's name, "Xiedafu", on the video, which could also be seen in the clip shared in the false posts (archived link).

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the Douyin clip (right):

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Screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the Douyin clip (right)

AFP geolocated the video to the Daquangou Fishing Port in Shandong province, more than 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) away from Taiwan's Kinmen islands (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the breakwater seen in the Douyin video (left) and the same structure shown in Google Maps satellite imagery of Daquangou Fishing Port (right): 

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Screenshot comparison of the breakwater seen in the Douyin video (left) and the same structure shown in Google Maps satellite imagery of Daquangou Fishing Port (right)

The later part of the video in the false post, from the 17-second to 33-second mark, corresponded to footage published by the state-backed Wenzhou Daily on August 6, 2023 about the start of the fishing season (archived link).

The report stated that about 1,000 licensed fishing vessels were allowed to operate from that day in the eastern city of Wenzhou.

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and Wenzhou Daily’s video (right):

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Screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and Wenzhou Daily’s video (right)

State-run Xinhua News Agency and Zhejiang Daily also reported on the fishing season that month (archived links here and here).

AFP has debunked other false posts linking unrelated videos to the deadly incident in Kinmen here.