Chinese diplomat deletes inaccurate post about bridge in Turkey

A Chinese diplomat in Northern Ireland uploaded a video to social media on Monday morning that inaccurately claimed a partially Korean-engineered bridge in Turkey withstood the recent devastating earthquake thanks to Chinese technology.

The inaccurate Chinese caption of the video showing the 1915 Canakkale Bridge posted on Twitter by Chinese diplomat Zhang Meifang reads, ″Sichuan Road Bridge, a subsidiary of the Shudao Group, is the sole participant in the construction of the world's longest-span suspension bridge by a Chinese-funded enterprise.″ [SCREEN CAPTURE]

A Chinese diplomat in Northern Ireland uploaded a video to social media on Monday morning that inaccurately claimed a partially Korean-engineered bridge in Turkey withstood the recent devastating earthquake thanks to Chinese technology.

The now-deleted video, uploaded to the Twitter account of Consul General Zhang Meifang in Belfast, displayed aerial footage of the 1915 Canakkale Bridge as it was under construction, describing it in an overlying caption in Chinese as “the world’s largest suspension bridge” and claiming “a subsidiary of Shudao Group is the sole participant in the construction.”

In an English caption accompanying the video, Zhang wrote, “The bridge built by China in Turkey’s withstood the earthquake #ChinaTech.”

Very little in either of those descriptions is true.

Although the 1915 Canakkale Bridge is indeed the world’s longest suspension bridge, with a main span of 2,023 meters (6,637 feet), it was built by a consortium led by Korean and Turkish construction companies and opened in 2022.

The bridge’s design was drawn up by COWI of Denmark and Pyunghwa Engineering Consultants of Korea, which was verified by Arup of Britain and Aas-Jakobsen of Norway with additional consulting work by Tekfen of Turkey and T-Ingénierie of Switzerland.

The actual construction was carried out by Daelim and SK ecoplant of Korea and Limak and Yapi Merkezi of Turkey, with some work by Sichuan Road and Bridge Construction Group of China.

The bridge spans the Dardanelles Strait, which, together with the Bosporus, form a series of international maritime passages that connect the Aegean and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea.

The bridge was also unlikely to be in any danger from the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey’s southeastern provinces last week, as it is located approximately 950 kilometers (590 miles) northwest from Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the quake’s epicenter.

The bridge’s name commemorates the Turkish naval victory over the Allies in the 1915 Dardanelles campaign during World War I.

The video was viewed over 208,000 times as of Monday 11 p.m., more than 13 hours after it was uploaded to Zhang’s Twitter account, before it was taken down sometime before noon on Tuesday.

The consul general’s account did not post an explanation for the deletion, or her earlier claim about the bridge being built with Chinese technology.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]