The social media accounts of some Chinese state media were blocked inside India on Wednesday, after Indian officials accused the outlets of spreading Pakistani propaganda and misinformation. The move came as India protested over Beijing’s decision to rename some locations in a disputed border territory.
The X accounts of China’s official state news agency Xinhua, and a state-backed nationalistic tabloid, the Global Times, were inaccessible inside India on Wednesday. Turkey’s TRTWorld was also blocked. Both China and Turkey are allies of Pakistan, with China providing the bulk of its weapons purchases. On Thursday, the Global Times account was restored, reportedly after a legal request.
India has targeted thousands of social media accounts in the last week, including a number of reputable media outlets and reporters, sparking criticism from press freedom groups. It’s not known if the blocking of the Global Times, Xinhua, and TRT are part of the same crackdown. X, formerly Twitter, is banned inside China.
India and Pakistan have given very different accounts of last week’s military clashes, in what was the worst violence between the two nuclear-armed nations in decades. Unverified reporting and propaganda has been rife throughout social and traditional media from both sides during the short conflict.
Last week, the Indian embassy in China accused the Global Times of “pushing out … disinformation” after it carried a report claiming Pakistan had shot down an Indian warplane. India’s ministry of information and broadcasting has been contacted for comment.
After hostilities escalated between India and Pakistan, China urged restraint from both sides, however it has been seen as more supportive of Pakistan, particularly in its provisions of weaponry, including fighter jets that were reportedly involved in the shooting down of Indian warplanes – an event celebrated by Chinese media.
On Sunday, China’s government announced a new batch of “standardised” placenames for what it says are Chinese locations in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh – which China calls Zangnan.
The release prompted a rebuke from India, which called it “vain and preposterous”.
“Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, said on Wednesday.
Later that day a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said the region was Chinese territory and the naming was “within China’s sovereign rights”.
India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, have had a fractious relationship, with occasional military clashes of their own along a 3,800km stretch of disputed border in the Himalayas. A deadly fight between opposing soldiers in 2020 saw 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers killed.
