“Please pray for China as it suffers from severe flooding due to heavy rains,” a Tagalog-language Facebook post shared on June 25, 2024, reads.
The post was accompanied by a photo of a flooded city center and read: “Look! China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is experiencing heavy rains and severe flooding due to a front, causing severe flooding in many areas.”
The post also included a link that was supposed to take readers to an “actual video” of the floods, but instead led to a landing page for online shopping platform Lazada.
A screenshot of the fake Facebook post taken on June 26, 2024
The post went viral after heavy rains and floods hit southern China, including the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in June 2024.
At least 38 people have been killed in the densely populated province of Guangdong, where record floods hit some areas, state media said. The provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou were also affected.
Scientists say climate change will make extreme weather events such as heavy rains more frequent and intense.
The photo was also shared on Facebook, along with other images of the flooding.
However, the photo is old and was not taken in Guangxi.
Typhoons of 2016
A reverse image search on Google and Baidu turned up photos showing floods in Xiamen, a city in southeastern China’s Fujian province, in 2016.
The state-run China Daily and Taiwanese newspaper Liberty Times published photos (archive links here and here) of a flooded intersection after Typhoon Meggie hit mainland China on September 28, 2016.
Typhoon Megi battered China, bringing heavy rain and winds of about 120 kph (75 mph), with more than 300 mm of rainfall in some areas, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
AFP also published photos of the flooding taken from different angles.
Below are screenshots comparing the image shared in the fake post (left) with a photo from AFP’s archive (right), with corresponding elements highlighted by AFP.
Screenshot comparison of the image shared in the fake post (left) and a photo from an AFP archive (right)
The caption of the AFP photo reads: “A road submerged in floodwaters brought by Typhoon Meggie in Xiamen on September 28, 2016.”
AFP has identified the location of the building along with (archive link).
Street View shows a dome on the roof of a grey building, next to a tall white building.
Below is a comparison of the image used in the fake post (left) and a screenshot of Baidu Maps Street View (right).
Comparison of the image used in the fake post (left) and a screenshot of Baidu Maps’ Street View (right)
AFP has previously debunked the flood photos here, here and here.
