Landfills and Ganga smear: Chinese vlogger's Delhi documentary filmed in Bangladesh

A Chinese influencer's so-called environmental documentary, depicting New Delhi as a mountain of garbage and the Ganga as a sewage-filled river, has landed under scrutiny after several visuals from Bangladesh were passed off as scenes from India.The 6-minute-47-second video, titled an "Environment Documentary", was uploaded on Douyin, China's version of TikTok, by user Liu Xiaohao, who has 1.12 million followers.It surfaced on the platform four days ago.The video depicts Delhi's landfills as enormous mountains of garbage, claiming that warning signs have to be installed to prevent aircraft from crashing into them. It also showcases garbage pickers, fires at dumping grounds, toxic pollution and open-air toilets to present a grim picture of the capital's waste-management challenges.Its portrayal of the Ganga is equally sensational.

The video alleges extremely high levels of E. coli contamination in the river and depicts it as a sewage-filled water body used by people for bathing, washing, cooking and other everyday activities. However, several visuals featured in the video are actually from Bangladesh rather than India, raising questions about the authenticity of its claims and the locations being portrayed.The video appears to follow a pattern of highlighting genuine environmental challenges in India while making exaggerated claims and combining visuals from different countries to construct an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the country.It ends with a particularly scathing remark, suggesting that "cleaning up India is a more difficult task than landing on Mars."The video has surfaced amid reports of Chinese nationals livestreaming from impoverished neighbourhoods in Dhaka while falsely presenting the locations as parts of New Delhi.According to an investigation published by Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo on November 6, around 150 Chinese nationals have been broadcasting from neighbourhoods such as Tekpara and Uttara in Dhaka, claiming that they are showing viewers India's capital.One such vlogger, identified as Mianmian, who said she was from China's Sichuan province, was seen livestreaming beside a canal in Uttara's Sector 12 on November 1.She introduced the area as New Delhi and described its homes as dirty, underdeveloped and unhygienic, Prothom Alo reported.In May, another Dhaka-based publication, The Business Standard, had also documented Chinese vloggers filming in low-income neighbourhoods such as Tekpara.- Ends