Plagiarised videos reposted with false subtitles to stoke anti-Japan sentiment in China

TOKYO - Online videos of Japanese women have been plagiarised and reposted on social media with false Chinese subtitles claiming “Ryukyu (Okinawa prefecture) belongs to China”.

This act, which comes amid deteriorating relations between Japan and China, appears to be aimed at stoking anti-Japanese sentiment in China and spreading the Chinese government’s territorial claims.

In December, a dance video of two young women “living in Ryukyu” was posted on social media platform X. The approximately 10-second clip includes Chinese subtitles reading “Ryukyu belongs to China, and Ryukyu is not called Okinawa. The Diaoyu Islands and Taiwan belong to China.”

The Diaoyu Islands is the Chinese name for the Senkaku Islands.

An investigation by The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper found that the original video was a promotional clip for a facility in the Kansai region. The video had been posted to the facility’s official TikTok account in August 2025.

An official from the facility’s operating company expressed anger, saying: “It’s outrageous that the video was used for political reasons without us hearing anything about it.”

The modified video was posted on X by an account based in China. Created in 2023, the account has posted about 15 similar videos since November 2025, following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remark regarding a potential Taiwan contingency.

In another video, a Japanese woman says “otsukaresama” (meaning “take care” or “well done”) in Japanese, but the Chinese subtitles refer to Ryukyu.

Professor Maiko Ichihara, an expert on public opinion manipulation who specialises in international politics at Hitotsubashi University, said the incident “is part of China’s influence operations, likely aiming to instil a territorial perception favourable to the Chinese government among young Chinese citizens, who have little interest in politics”.

Similar videos have also been posted on Chinese social media.

According to a report released in December by US research organisation NewsGuard, which evaluates news credibility, more than 100 videos featuring a Japanese female influencer with false subtitles asserting pro-China territorial claims have been posted on multiple platforms, including Chinese video-sharing app Douyin, receiving a total of one million likes.

The original videos were posted on YouTube by the woman raised in the northern Kanto region. She made no mention of Okinawa prefecture or territorial issues in the videos. NewsGuard concluded that “pro-China accounts are attempting to reinforce China’s claims in territorial disputes”.

Chinese influence operations targeting Japan are not new. In the past, false information about treated water related to Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was posted and spread on social media.

Malicious anti-China videos posted in Japan

Since November 2025, videos containing false information that criticises China have also appeared on Japanese social media. Some posters sought assistance to make the videos by posting help-wanted advertisements on crowdsourcing platforms for online job orders and assignments. In response to criticism, at least one of the platforms has blocked such requests.

In 2025, a Tokyo-based video distribution company posted help-wanted ads on a crowdsourcing platform seeking scriptwriters and editors for videos that are “anti-China” or “critical of China”. The job description included “videos depicting Chinese people engaging in fabricated nuisance behaviour or lacking morals, or such things occurring in China, to give them what they deserve or bring about divine retribution”.

The company admitted to The Yomiuri Shimbun that it had distributed a finished video containing false content to YouTube. “YouTube is for entertainment,” the company said. “The content doesn’t have to be 100 per cent accurate.”

In early December, the crowdsourcing platform blocked the company’s requests, determining that they violated its guidelines prohibiting “help-wanted requests that may lead to the misinterpretation of facts or the manipulation of perceptions”.

Regarding the videos containing false content critical of China, Associate Professor Shinichi Yamaguchi, who specialises in social informatics at International University of Japan, said: “This may undesirably stoke anti-China sentiment and promote xenophobia (among Japanese people).”

“Viewers who don’t know much about the nature of the internet especially need to verify their content by referring to other sources,” he added. THE JAPAN NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK