An old video of the People’s Liberation Army, the armed forces of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) has gone viral on social media in which the Chinese Air Force was caught passing footages of Hollywood movies as its own.
In 2011, the Chinese Armed Forces, which has been lately receiving a lot of wrath from across the world for unleashing savagery against the Indian troops near Ladakh, had tried to pass off a video of the 1986 Hollywood iconic movie “Top Gun” starring Tom Cruise as the footage of a PLA Air Force training exercise.
The China Central Television, the mouthpiece of the Chinese government had shown footage of what they claimed was an air force training exercise conducted on January 23, 2011. The report, which was aired during the evening news broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV), had shown a shot of an “enemy” jet bursting into a giant fireball after being hit by a Chinese fighter plane’s missile.
The video segment was also posted online with all the excitement, which quickly went viral. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force had supposedly integrated the movie into their propaganda footage to show that it was a J-10 fighter which shot the missile at another aircraft during a practice exercise.
However, the social media users and movie enthusiasts were soon quick to point that the footage was actually from the Hollywood movie “Top Gun” and accused the PLA of stealing it to further their false propaganda.
They soon pointed out that the aircraft the J-10 was shown shooting down was an F-5, an American aircraft, directly lifted from the movie “Top Gun”.
The Wall Street Journal had even compared frame-to-frame of the CCTV broadcast and Top Gun, which had led to the conclusion that both the videos were identical.
As soon as they were caught, the People’s Liberation Army had faced a severe embarrassment and were quick to pull the video. However, several Chinese websites and news sites published the videos comparing the uncanny similarities between the news report and the movie, leaving the PLA authorities red-faced.
