2015 Chinese video shared as explosion in Beijing amidst alleged coup

Hyderabad: Social media is abuzz with unfounded rumours of a coup in China. Several users have claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been removed as the head of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and placed under house arrest.

Against this backdrop, a video is doing the rounds on social media claiming that it shows an explosion in Beijing during the coup.

A Facebook user shared the video with the caption, "Footage of big explosions coming from #Beijing during the china coup against Xi Jinping."

A Twitter user also made the same claim while sharing the video.

Click here to view the post.

Fact Check

NewsMeter performed a reverse image search of the video's keyframes and found that the video was published by Daily Motion in 2015. The video is titled "200 Tons TNT Equivalent Huge Explosion in Tianjin China."

Taking this as a cue, we ran a keyword search and found a video with similar visuals published by BBC on 14 August 2015. The description of the video states that it shows "two massive explosions in the Chinese city of Tianjin." A warehouse that caught fire and exploded was owned by a company specializing in handling hazardous goods. It also reported that dozens of people died and hundreds were injured. The footage was taken by an eyewitness, Dan van Duren.

On 12 September 2015, The Guardian published a detailed report of 173 deaths in China's worst industrial disaster. It was found during the investigation that Ruihai International Logistics warehouses that caught fire had stored more hazardous material than authorised, including 700 tonnes of highly toxic sodium cyanide. The warehouses were also built closer to homes.

It is evident that the viral video is from 2015 and is not linked to the alleged coup in China. Hence, the claim is false.