Old news video shared alongside misleading claims political party 'sold citizenship' to Chinese nationals

"Thousands of Chinese nationals apply for citizenship, [this is] DAP's cunning way to colonise Malaysia," read the Malay-language caption of a video posted on TikTok on February 23, 2025.

The video shows a news report by local paper The Star about an event at the Kuala Lumpur City Hall and an interview with DAP politician Lim Lip Eng.

According to text added below Lim's interview, he supposedly said: "A message saying the DAP are giving out identity cards has gone viral, I told Kuala Lumpur City Hall that I am sad because many of my brothers from China cannot get citizenship."

Text below the video reads: "What are Chinese citizens gathering to buy?"

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Screenshot of the misleading TikTok post, captured on February 28, 2025

The video circulated against the backdrop of simmering racial tensions in Malaysia, where ethnic Chinese make up about a fifth of the Malay-majority nation's 34 million people (archived link).

AFP has previously debunked false claims that Malaysia granted citizenship to "millions of Chinese nationals".

Similar claims spread elsewhere on TikTok here and here, racking up more than 167,000 views, and Facebook posts here and here shared links to the TikTok posts.

But the video in fact shows a news report from 2018 about stateless persons and permanent residents mistaking a talk about the citizenship application process as a chance to change their status.

Lim, the DAP member of parliament shown being interviewed in the video, told AFP on February 27: "This is a classic tactic of the opposition who seek to exploit racial sentiments for political gain -- spreading falsehoods to turn us against each other."

No citizenship granted

The false claim was dismissed by a spokeswoman for the National Registration Department (JPN) on its official TikTok account on February 20 (archived link). 

She said JPN had taken part in the event organised by the DAP and given a talk about the process of applying for citizenship.

"It absolutely did not involve the process of granting citizenship or issuing national identification documents," she said.

Google keyword searches found the department also refuted the same claim in 2019 and 2023 (archived here and here). 

"The circulating video is an old video about a misunderstood message that had caused stateless people, temporary identification card holders and permanent residents to rush to the Kuala Lumpur City Hall to switch to citizenship status," read the department's 2019 statement.

Further reverse image searches led to a YouTube video posted by local newspaper The Star on June 30, 2018 (archived link).

"Hundreds of stateless persons and holders of red and green identity card holders, came to the Kuala Lumpur City Hall office thinking they could change their citizenship statuses," read the video's description.

It said Lim had invited stateless persons to attend a talk by the NRD, but the invitation was wrongly translated and went viral on social media.

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Screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading TikTok posts (left) and the same footage used in The Star's report (right)

Subtitles added to Lim's interview show he acknowledged there was a "wrong message that went viral on social media". He did not say, however, that he "was sad because many of my brothers from China cannot get citizenship", as was claimed in the misleading TikTok posts.

The Star's report makes no mention of the DAP "selling" citizenship to Chinese foreign nationals.