Video of China’s Yaxi expressway shared as 880 km highway connecting China and Pakistan

A video featuring a highway has been viral on social media the past few months with the claim that it is an 880 km highway connecting Pakistan and China, built in 36 months. The caption used to share the video says, “पाकिस्तान व चीन के बीच 880 कि. मा लंबा हाइवे जो 36 माह के रिकार्ड समय मे बना है 21वी सदी के अजूबे जैसा है जो अब आवागमन के लिए खोल दिया गया है इस की सुंदरता देखे (880 km highway connecting Pakistan and China was made in record time of 36 months, it is like a 21st century wonder which has now been opened for traffic, see the beauty of it – translated)”

पाकिस्तान व चीन के बीच 880 कि. मा लंबा हाइवे जो 36 माह के रिकार्ड समय मे बना है 21वी सदी के अजूबे जैसा है जो अब आवागमन के लिए खोल दिया गया है इस की सुंदरता देखे pic.twitter.com/lC15yheKdh

— MahendraMishra (@mishraji12111) June 24, 2019

Other users have also tweeted the video with the same claim worded differently – “China has built a highway 880 km long over the mountains & water To link their country with Pakistan! Have a look!”.

The video has also been circulating on Facebook since at least December 2018.

Fact-check

Alt News used InVid to break down the video into multiple frames, then performed a reverse image search of one of those frames on Yandex. This led us to several images and videos of similar-looking expressways. New China TV posted the same video on January 2, 2019, with the caption, “Amazing engineering: Stunning aerial view of Yaxi expressway in SW China”.

Using this information, Alt News did a keyword search on Google. We found multiple videos and websites consisting of visuals of the Yaxi Expressway. A Facebook user uploaded this video on November 7, 2018, with the caption “yaxi road，Yaxi Highway”.

China Xinhua News also posted the video on their Facebook page on January 2, 2019.

A simple Google search told us that Yaxi expressway is a 240 km section of the Beijing-Kunming highway, and is made up of 270 viaducts and 25 tunnels. It runs from Ya’an to Xichang, a province in Sichuan. The construction of the expressway began in 2007 by the central government and it became open for public use in 2012. The project cost almost 20.6 billion yuan ($3.3 billion).

Furthermore, we searched on Google to find out if a highway from China to Pakistan actually existed. A highway between China and Pakistan does exist. Karakoram highway is a 1,300 km national highway which goes from Hasan Abdal in the Punjab province of Pakistan, through Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan controlled Kashmir, to China National Highway 314. We found a BBC video that shows the same.

The claim has previously been fact-checked by Boomlive and Times of India in January, then by The Quint in May when the video resurfaced.

In conclusion, a video has been circulating on social media with the claim that it shows an 880 km highway connecting Pakistan and China, however, the video is actually of Yaxi expressway connecting Ya’an to Xichang in China.