After Chinese national flags were raised at a festival in Malaysia, prompting a backlash from Malaysian nationalists, an image of a doctored news article circulated online falsely claiming that China was considering returning investments in the Southeast Asian country’s northern state of Kedah to pull. AFP found that the article had been manipulated to imitate the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper. As of November 11, 2024, there were no official reports that China would withdraw investments in Kedah.
The fabricated article – shared in a Facebook post on October 28, 2024 – was created under the banner of Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP).
The Malaysian Post said people in Malaysia’s northern state of Kedah and eastern Kelantan state were not “desperate for investment from communist China”.
Kedah announced in March that it was ready to receive 50 billion ringgit ($1.1 billion) in investments from eight Chinese companies (archived link).
“China considers withdrawing its investments in Kedah,” reads the headline of the alleged article, above an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping and officials inspecting military equipment.
The text below the image read: “Beijing: After an altercation over the Chinese flag incident in Malaysia, Xi Jinping reportedly calls several companies for a meeting.”
The same image was also shared on Facebook here, here and here, as well as on X and WhatsApp.
It came up after Chinese nationals Attending a festival in Malaysia’s northwestern state of Perak on October 24, the Chinese national flag was waved at the event, prompting a backlash from Malaysian nationalists who are opposed to what they see as growing Chinese influence in the Southeast Asian country (archived links here and here).
China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner for the past fifteen years and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has sought a close and constructive relationship with Beijing (archived link). Anwar visited China in early November to further strengthen economic ties, his third trip since taking office in 2022.
However, SCMP told AFP on October 31 that the circulating image was a “fake news story imitating the publication”.
It had not published any such article on China’s withdrawal of investments from Malaysia as of November 11, 2024.
Doctored article
A reverse image search on Google led to the same image of Xi published in other SCMP articles (here and here), attributing it to state broadcaster CCTV (archived links here and here).
However, the layout of these articles differed from the alleged report circulating online.
The font, headline placement and alignment, and standfirst in the modified report did not match the layout of the articles on the SCMP website.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the incorrectly shared report (left) and an article on the SCMP homepage (right):
