Posts share fabricated report about China pulling investment from Malaysia

After Chinese national flags were raised at a festival in Malaysia, prompting a backlash from Malay nationalists, an image of a doctored news article circulated online that falsely claimed China was considering retracting investments in the Southeast Asian country's northern Kedah state. AFP found the article was manipulated to imitate the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper. As of November 11, 2024, there were no official reports that China was set to retract investment in Kedah.

The fabricated article -- shared in a Facebook post on October 28, 2024 -- was created under the banner of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper.

The Malay-language post said people in Malaysia's northern Kedah state and eastern Kelantan state were not "desperate for investment from communist China".

Kedah announced in March that it was poised to receive 50 billion ringgit ($1.1 billion) worth of investment from eight Chinese companies (archived link).

"China is considering to pull out their investment in Kedah", read the purported article's headline, above an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping and officials inspecting military equipment.

The text below the image read: "Beijing: Following an altercation involving the incident of China flag in Malaysia, Xi Jinping is reportedly calling several companies for a meeting."