Old Air Force One landing video falsely shared as Trump arrival in China
- Published on May 18, 2026 at 10:53
- 3 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong
Chinese and US staffers tussled over security arrangements during President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing in May 2026, but footage circulating online does not show uniformed American soldiers guarding the Beijing Capital Airport where his plane landed. The clip in fact shows former president Joe Biden arriving at a US military base in Tokyo during a 2022 visit.
"Beijing airport is guarded by the US Navy! And Navy troops can openly carry guns to protect the president. You can clearly see American soldiers equipped with M4 assault rifles just like in the United States! China's territorial sovereignty is a joke!" reads the simplified Chinese X post published on May 13, 2026.
The post, viewed almost 500,000 times, shows a crowd filming the landing of Air Force One while a soldier wearing what appears to be US military fatigues stands guard.
Similar claims spread on Weibo, Bilibili, Baidu's video platform Haokan, and the 163 blog, as well as in English-language posts, after Trump arrived in Beijing aboard a plane carrying senior US officials, close aides and business leaders (archived link).
The meeting in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping aimed to ease tensions between the rival superpowers. Trump said he made "fantastic trade deals" and resolved "a lot of different problems", while Xi described it as a "milestone visit" (archived link).
But on the sidelines, tensions flared between Chinese and US staff over security and press coverage arrangements (archived link).
These include an incident where Chinese officials blocked US officials and journalists in a room during Trump and Xi's visit to the Temple of Heaven, and an argument over whether a US Secret Service agent should be allowed to bring his weapon into the complex.
However, the video was filmed during former US president Joe Biden’s visit to Japan in 2022.
2022 Tokyo visit
A reverse image search found the same footage shared on X by a Japan-based user on May 10, 2026. The caption said it shows Air Force One landing at Yokota Air Base, home to US Forces Japan, during Biden’s visit a few years earlier (archived link).
The user said he reposted the old video as he looked forward to the annual US-Japanese Friendship Festival, an open-base event hosted by the US military in Japan on May 16 and 17, and expressed excitement about the aircraft he would see (archived link).
AFP contacted the user for comment but did not receive a response.
A similar event was held on May 22, 2022 -- when Biden arrived in Tokyo for the second leg of an Asia trip -- allowing the public to enter the air base (archived here and here).
Further keyword searches found that the US military’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) published video footage from the same day showing the landing from a different angle (archived link).
The DVIDS video was captioned: "President of the United States Joseph R. Biden arrives at Yokota Air Base, Japan, onboard Air Force One, May 22, 2022. President Biden arrived during the Japanese-American Friendship Festival 2022."
The scene also differs from AFP video of Trump’s landing in Beijing published on the night of May 13, which showed him being greeted by honour guards and children waving Chinese and US flags.
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation related to Donald Trump.
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