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Beijing quells rumours of looming Taiwan war stoked by fake PLA texts and misunderstood stockpile memo
- Rumour mill started after the Ministry of Commerce urged families to stockpile essentials but state media says the public read too much into the statement
- Chinese poem Elon Musk quoted on Twitter this week is same poem recited in 2000 by Jiang Zemin in reference to Taiwan
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Authorities in mainland China were rushing to quell rumours of imminent war with Taiwan in an attempt to prevent “unpredictable consequences”.
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The rumour mill began to churn after the Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) encouraged families on Tuesday to stockpile essentials.
Text notifications claiming to be from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and asking reservists to be prepared for a draft because the Taiwan issue had become severe were also circulating on the Chinese internet on the same day.
The PLA-affiliated social media account Junzhengping issued two statements on Weibo to debunk the rumours, saying the text messages were fabricated.
“These kind of rumours being able to spread widely is linked to the heated public discourse on the topic. It’s very easy for the public, who do not know the truth, to interpret this incorrectly, leading to unpredictable consequences,” said the statement published on Wednesday.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait continued with Beijing sending a record number of PLA fighter jets into the island’s air defence identification zone last month.
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Last week, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen broke with convention by acknowledging the presence of US soldiers on the island.
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