According to the fact-checking platform of the German-French public television, a Chinese daily tweeted a tourism video, but it was discovered that the image was in Switzerland. The original creator was not happy about this, saying that the Chinese plagiarism was a disgrace.
China Daily, the official Chinese media, tweeted a short video promoting Chinese tourism on May 10. The video shows the idyllic scenery of the mountains, with the accompanying text reading, “Wouldn’t you like to visit this peaceful place and spend time with your dog in a village at the foot of the mountains?” With the hashtag #ChineGlamour (Charming China).
The fact-checking platform Desintox-ARTE of the German-French public television station reported, “But China Daily, China’s most important and directly officially controlled paper, has apparently been given a free hand in terms of geography. For the scene in the picture is not a Chinese mountain range, but a few thousand kilometers away in Switzerland, in fact in the town of Brienz in Berne, Switzerland, next to the lake of the same name”.
The real source of the image is a six-minute video posted on YouTube in late April by Sylvia Michel, a well-known Swiss photographer and travel blogger. The plagiarized image from China Daily even uses a mirror effect, reversing it from the original to the left and right, and cropping out the author’s copyright floating watermark pressed on the top and bottom.
Immediately after the release of the film, eagle-eyed netizens noticed that the location of the image should be Switzerland instead of China, leading to many people leaving comments below questioning the source of the film. Michelle also informed Twitter as soon as she was told and expressed her displeasure with the Chinese daily: “It’s really a shame to copy a Swiss film, reverse it left and right, and then promote it as a Chinese territory. Are you guys serious?”
Many netizens below the original YouTube video have left comments expressing their support for Michelle. One user wrote, “It’s really disgusting that the Chinese Communist Party stole your beautiful images and kept them for themselves. They should be ashamed, but I know they don’t care about respecting other people’s work.”
The Chinese daily eventually removed the film, but offered no explanation. Yet only an hour before the plagiarized video was sent, the China Daily Twitter account had just denounced the Western media for lying in the form of a satirical cartoon that read, “The credibility of the Western media is gone.”
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