This is a Mandarin version of a patriotic Indonesian song that was composed in 2009

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 6, 2019 at 05:45
2 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A music video has been shared thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Instagram which claim it is a new Indonesian national anthem in Chinese. The claim is false; the video shows a Mandarin version of a patriotic song that was originally composed in the Indonesian language in 2009; the country’s national anthem is still “Indonesia Raya”.

The video was published here on Facebook on July 1, 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Screenshot of a misleading post

The post’s Indonesian-language caption translates to English as:
“Now Indonesia has had a new national anthem ‘JAYALAH INDONESIAKU’
One Archipelago... One Nation... One Language... That's Indonesia...
‘Thank you...
Thank you...
Thank you to NEW Indonesian Heroes’
‘Hope the Spirits of the Heroes Who Defend this Country Will Be Peaceful in Heaven, ALLAH.
Amen’.”

The 3-minute, 37-second clip shows a music video for a Chinese song. It also displays the lyrics of the song in both Indonesian- and Chinese-language subtitles.

The same music video has also been shared on Instagram here, and Facebook here and here, with a similar claim.

The video had been shared more than 4,000 times on Facebook before the post was deleted. The archived post can be accessed here.

The claim is false; the song in the music video is a Chinese-language version of an Indonesian patriotic song originally entitled “Jayalah Indonesiaku”, which means “Be Prosperous, My Indonesia”.

The Chinese-language version of the song has circulated online since at least 2012; the original Indonesian-language version was composed in 2009.

Reverse image searches on Google using a keyframe from the video found the Chinese-language version of the song was published on YouTube here on September 28, 2012.

According to this online catalogue by the Indonesian National Library, the audio recording of the original Indonesian-language version of “Jayalah Indonesiaku”, written by Soe Sien Ming and Thung Cu Lan, was published in 2009.

The music video for the original Indonesian-language version of “Jayalah Indonesiaku” was published here on the official YouTube channel of recording company Gema Nada Pertiwi (GNP), on August 18, 2010.

Both the Chinese- and Indonesian-language videos list Soe Sien Ming and Thung Cu Lan as the song’s composers and contain some identical clips.

The Chinese-language video has the GNP logo at the beginning of the footage.

GNP is a music-recording company based in Jakarta that was founded in 1970. The company says it began to focus on traditional music, pop music and patriotic songs in 1985.

A GNP executive told AFP by telephone on July 16, 2019, that “the Chinese version of the song was produced at the same time with the Indonesian version in 2009”.

“The Chinese version had been made to introduce Indonesia because the Indonesian version would not be understood in other countries,” he said.

He also said they produced the Chinese-language music video.

Indonesia’s national anthem is stipulated in the country’s constitution, which can be accessed here. Article 36B of the constitution states that the national anthem is “Indonesia Raya” (Great Indonesia).

The national anthem “Indonesia Raya” song can be found here.

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