Claim: This post on X from May 17, 2025, with over ten thousand views, purports to show China delivering aid by dropping it from the sky in Gaza.

Rating

DW Fact check: False In the 32-second video, 20 to 30 packages are seen falling from the sky with parachutes attached. The post is accompanied by a text listing Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, followed by numbers for each place. There is no reference to what these numbers mean. The figures could refer to recently announced investments and economic exchange frameworks between those countries and the United States. The post ends by claiming that the video shows China providing aid to Gaza from the sky. A reverse image search leads us to photographs of airdrops done in Gaza with similar parachutes. Those humanitarian aid deliveries took place at the beginning of March 2024. During that time, several countries dropped humanitarian aid from the sky in Gaza, as Israel blocked aid from crossing the border by land. This did not include China. It is difficult to geolocate where the original video was taken because of the widespread destruction in Gaza and rapidly changing landmarks. Additionally, there is limited access to Google Street View in Gaza. The account that posted the video on X seems to belong to a woman from Pakistan who joined the platform in 2011. She doesn't seem to be the person who took the video, as it previously appeared on another account at the beginning of April. The video and claim circulated at a time when aid deliveries are highly limited, as Israel stopped deliveries of humanitarian aid in Gaza on March 2, 2025. On April 1st, the video gathered 52.3 million views on TikTok and the claim that China was responsible for the airdrop only came up in the comment section. In the following days, several posts with the same video appeared. This one shares screenshots repeating the claim of China's involvement, and otherscombine different videos to make new edits and posts that have also gathered millions of views. China has not released any official statements that it had airdropped aid into Gaza. The last reported deliveries of aid from the Chinese government date to February 19th this year and were transported in trucks. Even as limited aid deliveries into Gaza have currently resumed, these only refer to land deliveries.

Reviewed by Deutsche Welle ↗ · May 20, 2025