The ‘fake India’ through Chinese content creators’ lenses

​​(This is an edited version of an article first published on Lianhe Zaobao (English edition).)　　

“This is New Delhi. Their houses are incredibly dirty. There aren’t even fans in these tin-roofed houses. This place is very backward, filthy and unhygienic, and public safety is poor too.”

These were the words of a Chinese woman calling herself “Mianmian”, who said she was from Sichuan, as she livestreamed on her phone beside a canal on 1 November. But she was actually in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The place she presented as India’s capital, New Delhi, was Tekpara, a low-income neighbourhood in Dhaka’s Uttara area.

An investigation published by the Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo on 6 November found that a group of Chinese nationals had been filming in the neighbourhood for months, livestreaming on Chinese platforms such as WeChat and Douyin. Some claimed they were filming in New Delhi. Residents estimated that more than 150 Chinese nationals were involved, although there is no official count.

Beyond misrepresenting their location, some content creators have also drawn controversy with their commentary and behaviour. One Chinese man known as “Wang Wei” claimed, while filming a local tea stall, that residents were drinking tea brewed with “cow urine”.

The report also said some residents complained that those filming had entered homes without permission, even intruding into bathrooms. They could see the phone cameras but could not understand the Chinese being spoken behind them. They did not know “what these Chinese content creators’ real intentions were”, much less what commentary was being overlaid onto their daily lives.

What exactly were these Chinese content creators filming for? A participant known as “Fangyou” told Prothom Alo that the livestreams were intended to promote products, but did not explain why this neighbourhood had been chosen.

Residents’ accounts offered more specific clues: some Chinese nationals brought Indian daily necessities, including shampoo, soap and Kesh King hair oil, to local pharmacies. They used the shops as backdrops for sales livestreams, paying the pharmacies 500 taka (approx. US$4) after filming.

Some locals were also hired to help with filming. One guide said she earned 700 to 800 taka a day, showing the Chinese content creators around. The Business Standard reported that some women accompanying the content creators were paid 500 to 1,000 taka.

Despite months of complaints from residents, the filming has remained without police oversight or regulation. Mohammad Khalid Mansur, chief of Uttara West police station, said police knew people were filming in the area, but the language barrier had hindered further follow-up. The authorities were also still investigating the specific motives behind the false location claims.

Responding to this geographical sleight of hand on Tuesday (10 November), Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal criticised the passing off of parts of Dhaka as Delhi to spread false narratives as regrettable. He said it would “only damage the credibility of those involved and those behind them”, and urged the relevant authorities to act.

Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, described such content as an “ideological struggle”. In his view, it was intended both to distort India’s image and to serve the creators’ pursuit of followers, likes and online attention.

However, publicly available reporting has yet to establish whether the filming was coordinated by a single party, nor is there enough evidence to conclude that all participants shared the same aims. But the sales practices disclosed so far at least suggest one business model: attract attention with scenes of poverty and sensational narratives about India, then use that attention to sell products.

How “filth and disorder” drive online traffic

The appeal of such content is closely tied to longstanding stereotypes that plague India. Dirty streets, the polluted Ganges and unhygienic street food have long been recurring images in online discussions of the country. Poverty and sanitation problems certainly deserve attention, but when similar clips are constantly cherry-picked and amplified, a complex country can easily be flattened to a handful of labels.

A report in The Straits Times in June this year cited experts as saying that, in China’s traffic-driven current-affairs content industry, portraying foreign countries as troubled, declining or backward was a high-reward, low-risk strategy. India has long been seen as a reliable way to attract such traffic.

These narratives are not hard to find on video platforms either. India Today’s open-source intelligence (OSINT) team searched Bilibili and Youku using India-related keywords and found hundreds of videos, identifying five recurring narratives: showcasing poverty and slums; describing India as “unliveable”; focusing on caste and rubbish; portraying Indian men as sexual predators; and treating Indian identity as a joke. As of 11 November, seven anti-India videos on Bilibili tracked by the report had amassed more than 2.06 million views.

In terms of traffic, denigrating India not only satisfies some viewers’ novelty-seeking curiosity, but also manufactures a sense of superiority by contrasting China with the outside world. When viewers see familiar imagery, it reinforces their existing judgements; meanwhile, content creators gain attention and continue seeking out similar material. Even without central coordination, commercial rewards alone may drive the continual reproduction and spread of the same narrative.

Of course, portrayals of India on Chinese platforms are not entirely negative. On social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and Douyin, travellers also share footage of modern, clean metro systems and urban facilities, introduce India’s technology industry, or draw on personal experience to show that conditions there are not as bad as imagined.

But alongside these accounts are videos marketed on their shock value, such as “Indian food challenges” and “visiting Indian slums”. The India that viewers ultimately see depends on what they choose to follow and what AI recommends.

Diplomatic ties warm, but prejudice still pays

While there is still a market for such sensational content, official relations between China and India are gradually warming.

Relations sank to a low after the border clash in 2020. A turning point came in October 2024, when the two sides reached an agreement on border patrol arrangements. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi subsequently met in Kazan, Russia, helping to restore dialogue between their countries.

Restrictions on travel have since eased gradually. India resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese nationals on 24 July 2025, and direct flights between the two countries resumed in October that year. Economic and trade ties have also continued to strengthen. According to official Indian figures, bilateral goods trade reached US$151.1 billion (S$194.1 billion) in the 2025 – 2026 financial year, making China India’s largest trading partner. Although border disagreements and trade friction remain, stabilising relations and restoring exchanges serve both sides’ interests.

This September, Xi and Modi met again during the BRICS summit in New Delhi. According to the Chinese readout, Xi proposed expanding cooperation in areas including people-to-people ties and direct flights to “effectively improve public support for bilateral relations”. Modi also expressed willingness to promote mutually beneficial cooperation with China and strengthen people-to-people exchanges.

Building public support requires conditions that allow people in both countries to understand each other better. Yet as travel gradually resumes, some content creators have portrayed this openness as a threat.

When China introduced the K visa last October to attract young foreign science and technology talent, some content creators invoking “patriotism” distorted it as a means for “Indians to steal jobs”, stirring resentment towards the policy. In the middle of this year, content creators also spread rumours that the Chinese embassy in India was “issuing visas indiscriminately”. China’s ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, who was implementing Beijing’s policies, also became a target of online abuse.

On 2 July this year, the Chinese embassy in India republished a commentary by The Paper titled “How should we view recent discussions about India?”, responding to online claims that “Indian tourists are flooding into China” and “Indians are taking up China’s resources”. The article said business visas accounted for more than 80% of Chinese visas issued to Indian citizens, while only a small minority were travelling purely for tourism.

The article also criticised some ostensibly “patriotic” content as, in reality, seeking traffic and promoting antagonism and xenophobia. “In essence, it exploits patriotism and national sentiment, polluting a healthy online environment and running counter to the open, confident mindset of a major power.”

This response highlights a contradiction: while expanding trade and people-to-people exchanges requires reducing misunderstandings, content creators who gain attention by disparaging foreign countries profit from amplifying them. As long as division and prejudice continue to drive traffic, improving diplomatic ties will not automatically put this business out of the market.

Of course, these voices do not represent all Chinese people, just as a few slum alleys do not represent all of India. But when negative images are repeatedly packaged as “what I saw with my own eyes”, partial impressions can easily be mistaken for a complete picture of a country.

That is precisely what makes the livestream beside the canal in Tekpara so absurd. Content creators do not even need to visit India; they need only find images that match their viewers’ expectations, add a few lines of commentary, and repackage Bangladeshis’ lives as evidence of India’s “filth and disorder”. The creators gain traffic, while viewers take a fabrication as yet another confirmation of their existing prejudices.

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