A state-run Chinese Twitter account has been caught stealing a video from a Swiss videographer and passing it on as their own for travel promotional purposes.
The Chinese government-run propaganda newspaper China Daily recently took to Twitter to show a video of what they called a Chinese village sitting on the foot of snow-capped mountains. The post, which had the hashtag "#GlamorChina," invited viewers to "visit this peaceful getaway and enjoy play time with your dog in a small town nestled at the foot of the mountain." Unknowingly, the footage in the video was taken not in China, but in Switzerland.
Breitbart exclusively reported that the lying Chinese propaganda media tried to promote China using stolen content featuring the Swiss Alps. The original video, which was spliced to include actual Chinese tourist destinations, was in fact filmed in Brienz, Switzerland, in the Emmental Alps by Swiss photographer and videographer Sylvia Michel.
Michel is the winner of the 2018 Swiss National Award for the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards. She shared that the video stolen by lying Chinese propaganda media was in fact taken by him during her "morning walk" in Brienz (see below).
Michel said that she reported China Daily to Facebook and Twitter, where the Chinese propaganda media posted her stolen footage. Under Facebook and Twitter's intellectual property rules, reposting without permission or consent is strictly prohibited.
The Chinese propaganda media deliberately edited the video by flipping the image horizontally and correcting its color. China Daily also edited the footage to include a stick in the dog's mouth. Michel took to her YouTube channel to update the title of her original video to "The true meaning of luxury 4K (Brienz in Switzerland...not China)." China Daily's tweet has been taken down as of writing.
Most recently, Chinese propaganda media is taking to Western social media to spread their messaging. According to a new report from the Associated Press, a recent investigation led by the media company and the Oxford Internet Institute showed that China's rising popularity on Twitter is "powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times."
What's more is that they are "covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people-often without disclosing the fact that the content is government-sponsored."
Former Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming joined Twitter in October 2019 and since then made himself appear to be the symbol of China's "wolf warrior" diplomacy. His tweets featured principled thoughts on Western anti-Chinese bias, which were "retweeted more than 43,000 times from June through February alone" by fake accounts or accounts that were found to have been suspended for violating Twitter's rules.
China reacted negatively to Twitter's banning of Chinese accounts, with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denying that they employed any "trickery" on social media and accusing Twitter of a "discriminatory attitude" They argued, "There is no so-called misleading propaganda, nor exporting a model of online public opinion guidance."
