Viral tweets claiming Chinese pro-democracy activist and dissident Jianli Yang admitted that more than 100 Chinese soldiers died in a clash with Indian troops at the Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh in June, are false with the claim originating on unknown websites.
The fake claim comes less than a month after 20 Indian soldiers including a commanding officer were killed in a skirmish with Chinese troops at the Galwan Valley on June 15-16, 2020, in one of the worst escalation of border tensions between the two nuclear-armed countries in recent times. While the Chinese army also suffered casualties, Beijing has been mum on the number of dead. BOOM has debunked misinformation on casualty figures from the Chinese side. Read about it here and here.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently visited Leh and met with soldiers injured in the clash.
Several Twitter users on Monday falsely claimed that Jianli Yang is a former officer of the China's People Liberation Army who admitted that China suffered more than 100 casualties at Galwan in Ladakh.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra and others such as Rishi Bagree, NewsLine IFE shared stories about the same from unknown news sites. English news channel NewsX also fell for the fake posts and on a show broadcasted on July 6 made the same false claims.
The viral claim said, "More than 100 Chinese soldiers killed in Galwan Valley" and some also added that the news was from a 'Chinese Military official', falsely describing Yang a member of the Chinese army. Kapil Mishra shared a story from Kreately - a self publishing platform and claimed that the numbers come from a Chinese military official.
View an archive of the tweet here.
Archive link
NewsLine IFE, an anonymous Twitter handle which publishes defence news updates also shared the same claim. BOOM has previously called out NewsLine IFE for peddling misinformation. Read more about it here.
NewsX carried the fake news in a broadcast titled, "'100+ Chinese Killed in Galwan' PLA Veteran's Big Expose". The anchor quoted Yang and called him a Chinese soldier and said, "More than 100 Chinese soldiers were killed".
View an archive here
Facebook page Nation With Namo also picked up the NewsX video and widely shared it on their page.
View an archive here
FACT CHECK
BOOM did not find any credible news site reporting Jianli Yang as saying that more than 100 Chinese soldiers died in the Galwan clashes. We also found that while most posts did not credit a news link, some gave the source for the information as an opinion piece in Washington Times, which does not make the same claim.
The piece was about growing resentment among veterans from the Chinese Army and does not mention the claim that more than 100 Chinese soldiers died in the clash.
We first analysed the unverified news sites that carried the story and were widely shared on Twitter.
Pratyaksha NewsCast
Pratyaksha Newscast is multilingual site published the story on July 3 with the title, 'India has slain more than 100 Chinese soldiers in Galwan Valley, claims former Chinese military official'.
Citing Washington Times, the article said, "Jianli Yang, a former Chinese military official and son of a leader in the Chinese Communist Party, made a sensational claim. As per Yang, 'More than 100 Chinese troops were killed in the dreadful conflict between Indian and Chinese soldiers, on the night of 15th June. But the Chinese regime is hiding this information from the Chinese people. President Xi Jinping is worried that if the information regarding the soldiers, killed in the Galwan Valley, is disclosed, the serving as well as the retired soldiers could revolt.'
Pratyaksha is a publication run by one Dr Aniruddha Joshi from Maharashtra - and is managed by his follower Samirsinh Dattopadhye. BOOM has reached out to Dattopadhye and the story will be updated if we get a response.
View the story here and an archive here
KREATELY
BJP leader Kapil Mishra and many Twitter handles shared the article published on Kreately titled, 'More Than 100 Chinese Soldiers Killed In Galwan Valley : Chinese Military Official Accepted'
Screenshot of the Kreately story
Kreately carried the same story as in the claim but did not credit Washington Times or any other source. A simple look at Kreately shows that it is a self publishing site which allows anyone to create an account and publish stories.
The story published by Kreately is riddled with errors including misspelling Yang's name first as 'Yang Jinali' and then 'Gianli' instead of Jianli Yang. The story is also not factual wherein it refers to Yang as military official and then as a former military official and also says his father is a current leader of the Communist Party of China and then later says 'a former leader of the CPC'
View an archive of the Kreately piece here
Who Is Jiangli Yang And Did He Say More Than 100 Chinese Soldiers Died At Galwan?
Jianli Yang a Chinese dissident and son of a former leader of the Communist Party of China is currently settled in the United States of America and carries on his human rights driven activism via his organisation Citizen Power Initiative for China.
On June 29, 2020, Washington Times, published an opinion piece by Yang titled, 'Retired and hurt PLA veterans could become a force against the Chinese Communist Party regime'. The piece spoke about rising resentment among veterans of the Chinese army soldiers and claimed that there have been regular protests in China by the veterans against government policies regarding pension and benefits.
In the same piece, Yang spoke about the casualties suffered by China and said, "Even a week after the incident China has refused to publicly admit that there had been casualties on its side...." and referred to the press conference held by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian where he declined comment on the number of Chinese soldiers who were injured of died during the Galwan clashes.
BOOM read through the Washington Times piece and did not find any reference to Yang having said 100 or more than 100 Chinese soldiers died during the Galwan clash. Yang does not mention the figure of 100 soldiers at any point in the whole piece.
The only time he speaks about the number of Chinese soldiers who died is to refer to Zhao's comment where he called, Indian media reports stating 40 Chinese soldiers had died in the clashes as, "false information"
Read the full opinion piece here. BOOM has reached out to Washington Times and the story will be updated upon receiving a response.
We also scanned through Yang's Twitter account and found no tweets pointing to the claim that 100 Chinese soldiers died or were killed by Indian soldiers in Galwan valley clashes.