At the end of October 2024, information circulated on the Internet that the German Foreign Minister had flown to China, but upon arrival she was pointedly not met by representatives of the host country. We decided to check the authenticity of this news.
The humiliation to which the head of the German Foreign Ministry was subjected in China was described “Gazeta.ru", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Evening Moscow", Lenta.ru and other Russian media. As evidence, a 19-second video is provided in which Burbock leaves the plane at Beijing airport, but only the driver and airport staff are waiting for her at the ramp. The video was also shared by social media users (“VKontakte", X, Facebook*), blog platforms (“Peekaboo", LiveJournal) and large Telegram channels: “Actually on the Dnieper"(1.7 million views at the time of writing this analysis), "Direct uhfir • news"(732,000), "Gossip"(327,000), "KB"(228,000), "Uncle Slava"(179,000), etc.
“Verified” was unable to find information in authoritative German, Chinese and international media or on the official resources of the German Foreign Ministry that Bärbock visited China in October 2024. Judging by list her official trips on the website of the German Foreign Office, she was in China only once - in April 2023. However, the video was definitely not taken during that trip. In particular, on photo from German media, published upon Burbock's arrival in China, the minister is dressed differently - not in a dark burgundy dress, but in a light blouse and green trousers. Then the official at the plane's steps met representatives of official Beijing.
A reverse image search shows that the viral video captured the arrival of the head of the German Foreign Ministry not in China in October 2024, but to Malaysia in January. And indeed, if you look pictures Burbock from that trip and compare them with the shots where she walks down the ramp, you can see that she is wearing the same dress. The people who appeared in the frame of the recording being analyzed also appear in photographs from various photo agencies from Burbock’s trip to Malaysia.
Official representative of the German Foreign Ministry Sebastian Fischer at a press briefing on October 28, 2024 confirmedthat the video that became viral was filmed at the beginning of the year in Malaysia. He explained that due to unforeseen circumstances, the plane then landed in another part of the airport, so the welcoming delegation was waiting at some distance from Berbock and was not captured on video.
It was not possible to establish where exactly this video with an incorrect description first appeared, “Verified”, but in Russian, most likely, the first post was in the Telegram channel “People talking in the kitchen" It was published on October 28 at 04:46 Moscow time and received only about 700 views. The post did not indicate that this was a recent visit - the author simply gave an example of how European officials are greeted in China. On the same day, the video began to circulate on other Telegram channels, and some of them already clarified that we are talking about a visit that took place yesterday, and also called what happened embarrassment of the day.
Thus, there was no scandal with Burbock’s humiliation upon arrival in China - at least because she had not visited the PRC for more than a year. The video, which is being circulated online with an incorrect description, was filmed in Malaysia, where the greeters were still waiting for the German minister. However, due to the fact that the plane, for technical reasons, landed in a different area of the airport where it was planned, they were not included in the video of Burbock descending the ramp.
*Russian authorities consider the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, to be an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0,via Wikimedia Commons
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