Verified: Cairo billboard to welcome Xi Jinping initially omitted ‘People’s’ from China’s name
Chinese President Xi Jinping made a two-day state visit to Egypt on Sept. 1 and 2, his first trip to Cairo in a decade, as the two countries marked 70 years of diplomatic relations amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
After what some media called a historic visit, a claim that a large digital billboard to welcome Xi used a wrong country name to refer to China widely circulated on social media such as Threads (archived here) and YouTube (archived here) in Chinese, which was also reported by some Taiwanese media outlets (for example, here and here).
These posts included an image showing a giant display mounted across an overpass above multilane roads welcoming Xi as president of “جمهورية الصين” in Arabic, which translates to “the Republic of China,” a formal designation associated with Taiwan.
It lacks the word, “الشعبية (the People’s)” to make “جمهورية الصين الشعبية,” the Arabic name of the People’s Republic of China. The message was flanked by Chinese and Egyptian flags and portraits of Xi and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
Although some AI detection tools identified the image as likely fabricated, Annie Lab can confirm that the image is authentic.
The photo was taken by AFP’s Khaled Desouki and widely included in the news coverage by media outlets such as France 24, Radio France Internationale, and CNN Arabic.
Annie Lab also found a video clip posted by Office of the Commissioner of MFA of China in Macao on Facebook (archived here), that shows the same digital billboard without the word “الشعبية (the People’s)” in the message.
This footage appears to have been taken at the same location at a different time, as indicated by the temperate reading shown above the billboard.
Immediate correction
The AFP dates the photograph to Aug. 31, a day before Xi’s arrival.
A review of the official Facebook video posted by the spokesperson for the Egyptian presidency indicates that the wording on the display was changed within a day.
Another video taken by Russian news agency Sputnik on Sept. 1 and a photo published by Aharm Online from Egypt on Sept. 2 also show the change. They both show the same welcome display with the word “الشعبية (the People’s)” clearly included in the message.
Annie Lab reviewed Egyptian news reporting and formal communication material discussing the visit, and they all referred to Xi with the full official title, “رئيس جمهورية الصين الشعبية (president of the People’s Republic of China).”
