Religious maritime pilgrimage mispresented as Chinese ships surrounding Taiwan

Published on May 6, 2025 at 09:51
3 min read
By Carina CHENG, AFP Hong Kong

After China held large-scale military drills around Taiwan on April 1, footage of a convoy of ships spread in social media posts falsely claiming it shows Chinese coast guard vessels off the Taiwanese coast. The video depicts a local temple's religious maritime pilgrimage.

"In Anping Harbour, Taiwan, mainland coast guard ships are forming a circle, and you can't see the end at all," reads a simplified Chinese X post shared April 15, 2025.

The video shows dozens of ships off the sandy shore of a port and several motorcyclists looking out from the coast.

Simplified Chinese text over the video reads: "So, those ships forming a circle belong to our Chinese coast guard?"

It also contains what appears to be a user's comment in traditional Chinese that says: "So this is the row of ships I saw outside Anping Port around noon today."

Screenshot of the false post taken April 30, 2025

China sent its army, navy, air and rocket forces to surround Taiwan on April 1 for large-scale drills that Beijing said were aimed at practising for "precision strikes" and a blockade of the self-ruled island (archived link).

Taipei deployed aircraft, ships and land-based missile systems in response to the ongoing exercises and accused Beijing of being the world's "biggest troublemaker".

China has increased the deployment of fighter jets and naval vessels around Taiwan in recent years to press its claim of sovereignty, which Taipei rejects.

Reverse image searches on Google, followed by keyword searches on TikTok, found the original video that a user based in Pingtung county uploaded April 10.

The caption says it shows a maritime pilgrimage for the sea goddess Mazu (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the video from the false post (L) to the original TikTok video

The user also shared several videos featuring the same event from the shore, with #MazuPilgrimage, #FengyunTemple and #Zhongyun (archived link).

AFP geolocated the clip to a sandy shore near the Fengyun temple and the Port of Zhongyun (archived here).

Screenshot comparison of the video from the false post (L) to the location as seen on Google Maps satellite

Keywords searches found a "2025 Linyuan Fengyun Temple Matsu Maritime Pilgrimage" event page published by the Kaohsiung local government on April 8 (archived link).

The pilgrimage was held from April 9 to 13. The religious event occurs once every four years and involves parades on land and sea dedicated to the goddess Matsu.

According to the website, a sea parade was held April 10 from the Zhongyun port to the Anping port. Several local TV stations also published clips of the event, including the Public Television Service and TVBS News (archived here and here).

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (L) and a screenshot of the PTS news report

Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration confirmed to the island's state-run Central News Agency on April 16 that no sightings of Chinese coast guard ships had been reported, while the Fungyun temple confirmed ships in the video belonged to them (archived link).

AFP has previously fact-checked other misinformation about Taiwan's military.

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