The false declare surfaced after the USA topped the ultimate medal desk on the Paris Video games with 126 medals with China in second place on 91, though each groups completed locked on 40 golds.
AFP reported this was the Chinese language workforce’s finest efficiency at an abroad Olympics, and a few followers argued that China was the “primary out of sovereign nations” by together with the medals received by Hong Kong and Taiwan (archived hyperlink).
Beijing claims democratic Taiwan as a part of its territory and has by no means renounced using pressure to deliver the island underneath its management, however the island has maintained a self-ruled standing in some ways, together with sending its Olympic workforce underneath the identify “Chinese language Taipei” (archived hyperlink).
Hong Kong continued to ship a separate workforce to compete within the Olympics after its return to Chinese language rule in 1997 (archived hyperlink).
The false declare has unfold on X, Fb, Weibo, TikTok, Chinese language video-sharing platform Bilibili and content material aggregators Sohu and NetEase.
Nonetheless, the IOC has denied the declare that it issued the fabricated listing that put China on the high of the tally.
‘No reality’
“There is no such thing as a reality to those claims,” a spokesperson for the IOC stated in an e mail on August 23, 2024 and referred AFP to the official medal desk revealed on the IOC web site (archived hyperlink).
It places the USA on the high with 40 gold, 44 silver and 42 bronze medals, adopted by China.
The desk additionally lists the Taiwanese and Hong Kong groups on the thirty fifth and thirty seventh locations respectively, separate from the Chinese language workforce.
AFP has beforehand debunked different false claims associated to the Chinese language groups on the Paris Video games right here, right here and right here.
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