No, this video – posted days before a mass protest in Hong Kong – does not show a convoy of tanks entering Shenzhen, China

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 19, 2019 at 12:00
3 min read
By Esther CHAN, Rachel YAN,

A video that shows multiple tanks on a train track has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube posts published days before a mass protest in Hong Kong. The posts claim that tanks and armoured vehicles have arrived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. The video is being shared in a misleading context; it was actually filmed in Longyan, another Chinese city some 500 kilometres northeast of Shenzhen.

The footage has been viewed more than 830,000 times and retweeted nearly 8,500 times since being posted here on Twitter on June 5, 2019.

The post’s Chinese-language caption says: “A convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles have entered Shenzhen! On June 9, have they decided to suppress Hong Kongers and cause bloodshed?”

Shenzhen is a city in the Chinese province of Guangdong, just north of Hong Kong. Here it is on Google Maps.

On June 9, 2019, there was a mass protest in Hong Kong over the government’s plans to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland, AFP reported here.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading tweet:

Screenshot of misleading Twitter post

The same claim and video have been shared hundreds of times on various platforms, for example here on Twitter and here on Facebook.

Chinese-language newspaper The Epoch Times also shared the clip on its YouTube channel here, and the claim and video have been shared in other languages, such as here in Spanish.

Key identifying features in the footage show the video was actually shot at a train station in Longyan, a city in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian.

A sign for Longyan Railway Station in Chinese and English can be seen at 0:02 in the video; below is a screenshot of the sign:

Screenshot of the Longyan Railway Station sign

According to Google Maps, Longyan is around 520 kilometres (320 miles) northeast of Shenzhen.

A keyword search on Chinese microblogging website Weibo leads to a series of photos geotagged to Longyan Railway Station by various users showing similar features to those in the video in the misleading tweet.

Below is a comparison of a screenshot of the buildings and yellow fences seen at around 0:08 in the misleading video (L) and a photo in this Weibo post by user 谢芳芳是活诸葛 (R):

Below is a comparison between screenshots from the video in the misleading post (L) and a photo in this Weibo post from user FJSCCHJ (R):

AFP found earlier versions of the video uploaded to Twitter on June 1, 2019, such as in this tweet stating the clip was shot at Longyan Railway Station in Fujian.

The uploader of the first tweet, @wangshi77, told AFP via Twitter direct message that the video "appeared in a WeChat group in mainland China last month", meaning May 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the message:

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail