On April 19, 2024, nearly a billion Indians began casting their ballots in India’s six-week general election — dubbed the world’s largest democratic exercise.
Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all but assured victory as a weakened opposition is pushed to the sidelines.
The image was shared alongside similar claims on Facebook and on social media site X.
But the bridge is in fact located in eastern China.
Jiaozhou Bay bridge
A reverse image search on Google, followed by a keyword search on Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — found the image in the false posts corresponds to drone footage of the bridge uploaded by a photographer on August 15, 2022.
The simplified Chinese caption reads, in part: “This is the Jiaozhou Bay bridge.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the false posts (left) and the eight-second mark of the Douyin video (right):
The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China’s eastern Shandong province spans 24 kilometres (14.9 miles) and connects the port city of Qingdao to the industrial city of Huangdao (archived link).
When the bridge opened to traffic in June of 2011, it was the longest sea bridge in the world at the time (archived link).
Further keyword searches found a similar photo of the Jiaozhou Bay bridge published in June 2011 in AFP’s archives, credited to Chinese photo agency ImagineChina (archived link).
The location of the four pylons in the foreground can be seen on Baidu Maps street view imagery of the bridge here, while the tower in the background can be seen here (archived links here and here).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the Douyin video of the bridge (left) and the Baidu Maps street view imagery (centre and right), with similarities marked by AFP:
Mumbai has a sea link bridge, built in 2009, but the structure and shape of the pylons are different from the ones seen in the image in the false post (archived link).
AFP has debunked misinformation swirling around India’s general election here.
