Old clips misrepresented as Chinese citizens evacuating from Iran during 2026 war
- Published on March 30, 2026 at 11:21
- 3 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong
The Chinese government urged its citizens to leave Iran after the Middle East war broke out in February 2026, but old visuals spreading online do not show people fleeing the latest conflict as part of a government operation. They are in fact taken during efforts by the Chinese government to pull its citizens from the region in previous years.
"A total of 3,125 Chinese citizens, including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan, have been safely evacuated from Iran!" reads a simplified Chinese X post published on March 4, 2026.
"Those Taiwan bluebirds love bashing mainland China. But when something happens to them abroad, they still have to rely on the mainland for rescue!" it goes on to say, referring to the supporters of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party.
The post, which has received over 79,000 views, includes a video which begins with an officer saying, "Please be assured. We are here. You are safe".
The clip then cuts to scenes of people boarding a vessel and waving Chinese flags while a woman says, "When I saw the People's Liberation Army, I cried. I am very touched."
It goes on to show people leaving a plane while Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun can be heard in the background saying "3,125 Chinese citizens have been safely evacuated from Iran".
"Among them are a ten-month-old baby, an elderly person in his seventies, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan residents," he says. "As of now, Chinese citizens who intend to leave Iran have already left for safer regions."
The same clip spread on Threads, Facebook, and Douyin after the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on March 2 that some 3,000 Chinese citizens had left Iran due to the Middle East war (archived link).
China's embassy in Iran has provided information on land crossings into neighbouring countries including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Turkey, and urged citizens to travel to the checkpoints "on their own when the situation permits" (archived here and here).
It has not mentioned a centralised effort to pull citizens out of Iran similar to that in the false posts, which share visuals from previous evacuations.
A reverse image search on Google found that the first part of the false clip was taken from videos published by state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) on April 27, 2023 on YouTube and its website (archived here and here).
Their descriptions say that 678 Chinese citizens were evacuated from Sudan to Saudi Arabia on April 26, 2023 by a Chinese warship.
A keyword search on Douyin showed the second part of the false video was actually from a CCTV video published on June 23, 2025 showing a foreign ministry press conference hosted by Guo on the day where he gave details on China's effort to evacuate its citizens from Iran (archived here and here).
China's decision to pull its citizens from the Islamic republic at the time came amid the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, during which Iran's nuclear and missile sites were attacked and leaders of the military and domestic security services were killed. The United States intervened briefly, launching strikes against three major Iranian nuclear sites (archived here and here).
Chinese state media reported chartered flights were organised from neighbouring Turkmenistan for citizens who wanted to return home (archived link).
AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the Iran war.
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