| schema:text
| - No evidence suggests French or Russian media used the alternative Olympic medal table
A medal table for the Paris Olympics that places China at the top with 44 gold medals has been widely circulating on Chinese social media.
The popular table adds two gold medals won by delegates from Hong Kong and another two by Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), counting them under the People’s Republic of China, putting the country ahead of the United States.
After the U.S. team narrowly beat France in the women’s basketball final and won their 40th gold, it replaced China’s first place on the official overall medal table.
The final result shows the United States in first place and China in second place, with both countries tying for gold medals at 40 each. However, the U.S. leads in the overall medal count, finishing with a total of 126 medals compared to China’s 91.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) lists Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, and China separately, as each has a separate Olympic Committee. Accordingly, the official Olympic medal table does not group the three.
While state-owned media outlets like CCTV and CGTN reported the accurate medal count, some Chinese internet users started circulating an image depicting China with 44 gold medals on popular platforms like Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Weibo, Bilibili and NetEase. The most viral post garnered 177,000 likes and 4,000 reposts and comments.
Many of them claimed that the table was created and used by France Télévisions, France’s national television broadcaster (see here, here, and here).
Others claimed it was created by the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, or Comité National Olympique Et Sportif Français (see here, here and here). Many online comments praised France for upholding the “One China” policy.
Other users claimed it was created by Russian outlets instead (for example, here, here and here).
However, Annie Lab found no evidence supporting the claim that French or Russian media or authorities have ever mentioned the alternate medal table.
France Télévisions, for example, published the official Olympic medal table on its website with the U.S. at the top.
We also looked at the French Olympic Committee’s official website and social media accounts, including X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, but none even posted a medal table.
We also used Yandex, a popular Russian search engine. No image or keyword search yielded a result indicating that any Russian media outlet created or mentioned the alternative medal table.
The earliest appearance of the image we found was on Chinese social media. It was posted by a Weibo user at 11:36 pm on Aug. 11, less than 14 minutes after the U.S. won the last gold medal in women’s basketball.
HKBU Fact Check also investigated the same medal table.
Annie Lab debunked a similar claim during the last Olympic Games in Tokyo:
False: Olympics medal table with China on top is neither official nor authentic
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)