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| - Misleading: This photo does not show California governor welcoming Xi Jinping with Chinese flag
A photo showing California Governor Gavin Newsom raising the Chinese national flag was widely circulated on X, Baidu and Weibo last month with a claim that he did this to welcome President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Week summit in San Francisco.
Together, these posts have more than 1,800 engagements as of this writing. However, the claim is misleading.
While the photo of Gavin Newsom is an authentic news image, it was taken over a decade ago when Newsom was the Mayor of San Francisco. The state-run China News Service published the photo on Sept. 22, 2009.
It features Newsom and then Chinese Consul General Gao Zhansheng, who reportedly raised the Chinese flag together on the San Francisco City Hall balcony in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Newsom served as San Francisco’s mayor from 2004 to 2011 when the photo was taken. He was elected governor of California in 2018.
The city of San Francisco regularly celebrates China’s National Day. Annie Lab found news reports about the event in 2014, 2019, and this year, for example.
On the day of Xi’s arrival at the APEC summit meeting in November this year, Newsom greeted the Chinese president at the San Francisco International Airport along with his partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and Mayor London Breed, according to NBC.
Newsom is known for his softer stance on China. In October, he went to China on a weeklong trip and met with Xi. China’s state-run Global Times said Newsom has “a deep connection with China during his tenure as mayor of San Francisco.”
Repeated misleading usage of dated photos
During this year’s APEC summit, the Chinese leader’s visit to the U.S. drew much attention.
While his arrival had brought crowds of supporters and protestors to the streets in San Francisco, some old photos were also misleadingly used on Chinese platforms to imply Xi’s popularity in the U.S.
For instance, a Baidu article about overseas Chinese welcoming Xi was published on Nov. 15 with a photo showing San Francisco’s mayor raising the Chinese national flag in a ceremony that took place two months earlier than the summit, on Sept. 30.
Notably, the Baidu article also included two authentic news photos showing Chinese supporters cheering for Xi upon his arrival, taken by Wang Bingru, a Pheonix TV journalist based in the U.S. She was in San Francisco covering the APEC summit at that time.
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