Photo: A screenshot of the original tweet of Twitter user “LRG”

Chinese and overseas internet users hit social media on Friday to mock CNN for misidentifying Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region by locating it instead in a small town of the same pronunciation in South China's Guangdong Province during a live show featuring so-called "human rights concerns."

A screenshot of CNN correspondent David Culver talking about the human rights "problems" in China's Xinjiang region was uploaded by internet user "LRG" on Twitter on Thursday, saying he or she was glad to catch Culver's live shot. 

The map beside Culver marked China's Xinjiang - a region that takes up one-sixth of the whole country's territory - as a small dot near Hong Kong in South China.

Photo: Screenshot of part of China's map. Red spot is Xinjiang town in Guangdong Province.

The screenshot soon caught the attention of domestic and overseas netizens and provoked sarcasm as users noted CNN might have mistaken the region for the Guangdong Province town of Xinjiang in Wengyuan county. 

"The CNN working staff seemed to use Google to search 'Xinjiang' and then get the location… so unprofessional… I almost laughed with my tears out," one Weibo user posted. 

Another Twitter user commented that the wrong map showed the ignorance and hypocrisy of CNN and other US media "as they actually know nothing about China's Xinjiang not even its location but they are still giving intensive Xinjiang 'reports.'

"All their Xinjiang reports should be flushed in the toilet," another Weibo user posted. 

Neither CNN or Culver noticed the mistake at the first place: Culver even retweeted LRG's tweet with the wrong map on it. 

A netizen "Lucy" commented that the "correspondent" had lost his credibility and the tweet showed he cared nothing about the Xinjiang region except for using it in CNN's anti-China narrative. 

Culver had been engaged in revisiting Wuhan and reporting on China's reciprocal measures of closing down the US consulate in Chengdu of Sichuan Province in response to the US closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. 

However, as of press time, "LRG" has deleted the original tweet. But the screenshot of the original tweet can still be found on Twitter. 

Some pointed out that this was not the first time some Western media was caught out hyping anti-China topics without basic knowledge. 

For example on January 19, the Chinese version of @BBC News released the video "The Road back to Wuhan" on its Twitter account about the city hit hard by COVID-19 in Central China's Hubei Province. 

But the BBC map graphic placed Hubei near provinces like Northwest China's Shaanxi or Gansu Province. 

One netizen joked: "We used to say the BBC news may only got the time and location right and now we cannot even be sure about that!"

Global Times