Footage of bridge in China falsely shared as railway bridge in Indian-administered Kashmir

Published on October 8, 2024 at 04:05
4 min read
By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India

A video of vehicles crossing a bridge over a valley in China viewed thousands of times on social media has been shared with a false claim the scenes are from Indian-administered Kashmir. The clip in fact shows the Beipanjiang Bridge in Guizhou, a province in southwestern China.

"Jammu & Kashmir NH 44, Jai hind," read the caption with the video shared on Facebook on September 29.

Jammu and Kashmir is a union territory of India and is part of the disputed region of Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1947 (archived link).

National Highway 44 is India's longest highway connecting the city of Srinagar in the northern tip of Jammu and Kashmir to its southernmost tip in Kanyakumari (archived link).

The footage shows what appears to be drone shots of vehicular movement on a bridge over a valley.

The names of six cities in the Jammu and Kashmir region appear in floating text, suggesting the bridge connects them.

Screenshot of the false post taken on September 29, 2024

The clip was shared with similar claims elsewhere on X and Facebook.

Five years after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi stripped Kashmir of its special semi-autonomous status, the northern Indian region voted in its first local election in a decade between September 18 and October 1 (archived link).

The Modi-led central government and its supporters have claimed that during this period the government has significantly developed infrastructure in the troubled Himalayan region (archived link).

The newly finished Chenab Rail Bridge -- which connects two mountains with an arch 359 metres above the cool waters of the Chenab River -- is seen to "facilitate movement" of ordinary people and goods from the rest of India to the restive Kashmir valley (archived link).

But the video shows a railway bridge in China.

Bridge in China

A reverse image search of keyframes on Google found a similar video published on the official Facebook page of Chinese media outlet Shanghai Daily on February 17, 2021 (archived link).

"Beipanjiang Bridge is the world’s highest bridge. It is built 565 meters (1,850 feet) above the Beipan River Canyon between Guizhou Province and Yunnan Province," read the caption of the post.

It has opened to traffic in China in 2016, connecting two provinces in the mountainous southwest and reducing travel times by as much as three-quarters, local authorities said (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison between the clip shared in false posts (left) and the video in Shanghai Daily's Facebook post (right):

Screenshot comparison between the clip shared in false posts (right) and the video in Shanghai Daily's Facebook post (left)

An AFP photo of the Beipanjiang Bridge was also published by the Toronto Star here (archived link).

The design and colour of the Chenab Rail Bridge also look different from that of the Beipanjiang Bridge, as seen in the picture taken by AFP below:

A general view of Chenab bridge in Jammu and Kashmir, taken on July 6, 2024 (AFP / TAUSEEF MUSTAFA)

AFP previously fact-checked misinformation about the Chenab Rail Bridge here.

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