This photo taken on March 6, 2020 shows paramilitary police officers wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus as they stand guard below a portrait of late communist leader Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing. - China reported 22 new deaths on March 9 from the new coronavirus epidemic, and the lowest number of fresh cases since it started reporting the data in January. (Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP) (AFP / Greg Baker)

Posts falsely purport to show 'precious footage' of Chairman Mao Zedong

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on February 19, 2021 at 06:10
  • Updated on February 19, 2021 at 19:19
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP Hong Kong

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A video has been shared thousands of times in posts on Twitter and Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili purporting to show “precious historical footage” of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong exercising outdoors. The claim is false: the video in fact shows an elderly man practising martial arts at a tourist site in China in 2020.

The video was posted here on Twitter on February 6, 2021. It has since been viewed more than 9,000 times.

Screenshot captured on February 18, 2021, of the misleading Twitter post

The tweet’s Chinese-language caption translates in English as “Mao Zedong”, referring to the founding father of the People’s Republic of China who died in 1976. Text superimposed on the video reads “Precious historical footage” and “Chairman Mao taking exercise”. 

The logo of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, features in the corner.

The video was also shared alongside similar claims on Twitter here and here and on Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili here.

However, the claim is false.

A search of the Douyin username that appears in the video found this similar footage posted on November 15, 2020 by a user called Qingzhou Xiaoyige.

Screenshot captured on February 18, 2021, of the Douyin footage

The Douyin footage is the same as the misleading video circulating on social media, but the text caption makes no reference to Chairman Mao. The video also has Chinese-language texts superimposed on the top reading “precious historical footage”, while the caption claims it shows “an old man” practising kung fu.

It is the earliest version of the footage AFP traced online through reverse image searches.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the misleading Twitter video (L) and the Douyin footage (R):

Screenshot comparison between the misleading Twitter video (L) and the Douyin footage (R)

Contacted by AFP, Qingzhou Xiaoyige said he filmed the video in Ouyuan Park in east China in November 2020 and added a black-and-white filter for artistic effect. 

“It’s certainly not Chairman Mao, and I’ve never claimed it’s Chairman Mao,” wrote Qingzhou Xiaoyige. “It shows an ordinary elderly person who was practising martial arts.”

He told AFP that he filmed the video shortly before posting it on Douyin on November 15, 2020, in Ouyuan Park within Qingzhou Ancient Town, a tourism site in east China’s Qingzhou city in Shandong province.

Visual clues from Google Maps confirm the video was filmed in Ouyuan Park.

Screenshot of Ouyuan Park from Google Maps (L) and Qingzhou Xiaoyige’s

Qingzhou Xiaoyige regularly posts videos from his hometown, as seen here and here.

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