Is this video proof that China’s army will attack NATO to defend Russia? Nope.
A video showing Chinese President Xi Jinping giving a speech to the Chinese armed forces has been going viral on social media since mid-March. The accounts that are sharing this footage say that it offers proof that China is ready to deploy its army if the United States and NATO attack Russia. But it turns out that the video was filmed six years ago.
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A video showing Chinese President Xi Jinping giving a speech to China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army, went viral in mid-March. The accounts that shared it said that the footage provided proof that China’s army was ready to respond if the United States or the countries united under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, attack Russia.
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However, it turns out that this video was taken out of context. When we did a keyword search, we realised that it was posted online for the first time six years ago – and Xi made no mention of Russia or NATO.
The fact-check, in detail
A video showing Chinese President Xi Jinping giving a speech in front of rows and rows of China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army, has had hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook, Instagram and X since it started circulating in mid-March 2024.
The accounts that have been sharing the video have also been making claims about what Xi said during the speech. This French account, for example (whose post featuring the video garnered nearly 400,000 views), claimed that in the speech, Xi declared that China was throwing its military might behind Russia.
"China is ready to intervene militarily anywhere if the United States or NATO decide to attack Russia,” the post quoted the spokesperson for the Chinese defence ministry as saying.
"Here I give my orders: the military, at all levels, should strengthen military training and war preparedness, unswervingly place military training at a strategic position and effectively implement military training as its central task,” read the English subtitles for Xi’s speech in Mandarin.
But contrary to the claims made in the post, Xi makes no mention of a potential attack on NATO countries or even an attack in defence of Russia – or at least according to these subtitles. To be sure, we double checked. We had Xi’s speech translated and our translation matched up with the subtitles on the video shared on X.
However, we also noticed something else while studying this video. In the upper right corner, there is a logo that looks like the logo of UK media outlet The Guardian.
We ran a simple keyword search using the terms "Chinese army" and "The Guardian" and found an older version of the video that was posted online before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Turns out, the same footage of Xi giving the same speech to the army appears in a video posted by The Guardian on YouTube on January 4, 2018. “Chinese army puts on show of military might for Xi Jinping", reads the title on the video.
“China’s president addresses 7,000 service personnel as the country starts a fresh round of training in Hebei province, just outside Beijing. Xi stressed the importance of real-combat training and winning wars,” reads the description on the video posted to YouTube by The Guardian.
“President Xi Jinping has ordered the creation of an elite combat force through real combat training, digitization, innovation and reform,” explained China’s official press agency Xinhua in an article published in English on January 4, 2018.
The French-language coverage of the event says that it was the first time the entire Chinese armed forces had been brought together. It also reported that Xi told the soldiers to “reinforce military training focused on combat preparedness”.
However, neither the French article nor English article covering the event mentions combat against any country in particular.
There has been quite a lot of fake news circulating online about China backing up Russia militarily. Fact-checking unit AFP Factuel (run by French wire agency Agence France Presse) debunked this post on X, which claimed that the spokesperson for the Chinese ministry of defence said that his country was ready to support Russia if NATO intervened militarily, along with a photo of the spokesperson during what looked like a press conference.
However, AFP Factuel debunked these claims in a post on X in French: "We have found no trace of the speech attributed to the Chinese spokesperson in the media or on the ministry’s website. The spokesman himself, interviewed in March 2022, formally refuted claims that he made this statement.”
AFP reported that this fake news item had been circulating for at least two years.