A video titled "China's gas canisters were sold to the Middle East and converted into cannons, the power is amazing, and the post-90s guys made three hundred million yuan" went viral on the Internet.
Will there really be weapons on the battlefield that are modified from gas canisters?
Were Chinese gas canisters really sold to the Middle East and converted into shells?
Post-90s Chinese guys have made three hundred million yuan by this?
Where is the source of the news, and how much truth is it?
This episode will get closer to the back of this rumor and expose the truth.
1. Are gas canisters really converted into artillery shells?
We found that in this hot nine-second video, the photos that appeared in the eighth second were particularly eye-catching.
This photo is full of cannons made of gas canisters, is the content of this photo real, and where did it come from?
We found this photo in an official account article on the Internet.
The image, first published by The Associated Press on July 6, 2014, was captured by Syrian government forces in the Sheikh Najjar neighborhood of the Aleppo region, according to the Syrian state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, but the photo does not mention the process of converting gas canisters into cannons, nor does it mention that the gas canisters came from China.
compere
From this factual investigation, it is a fact that gas canisters have been converted into shells in Syria. So why use gas canisters to convert cannons on the battlefields of the Middle East?
observer
A similar weapon, called the "IRAM," was first discovered in Iraq. Its range is relatively close, within 140 meters, using a gas canister as the main body of the warhead, so its explosive power is very strong. In a battlefield like Syria, there are actually very few artillery weapons in the real sense of support, and this weapon is so powerful that it has gradually become a very important support weapon.
2. How are the cannons converted from gas tanks on the Syrian battlefield associated with China?
We found that many media outlets had reported on similar shells, until the above-mentioned image published by the Associated Press was searched, and we were able to determine that two days later, on July 8, 2014, the above picture was reprinted by the Chinese media.
In February and March 2015, both the Daily Mail and Reuters published articles calling for the existence of homemade weapons of war in Syria, though none of these reports linked them to China.
In this 9-second video, there is a short video that can be seen from the Middle East, does this short video mention China's gas tanks again?
We found in the massive amount of information that the first time to link the gas tank cannon to China should be on November 11, 2015, there is a self-media blogger, published on the "Daily Headlines" website article, but this article is currently impossible to view, we also found only a screenshot through the network clues.
There was a lot of information about the content, text and pictures about the conversion of gas canisters into cannons, until we searched on a video site and found an account that specialized in posting homemade weapons, and the name of the account was self made weapons.
Judging from the account information and content posted by self-made weapons, this self-media blogger is located in the United States, with more than 2,000 subscribers and 75 videos.
The video content mainly published videos of homemade weapons in Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, and in its account we found some videos, two of which highly coincided with the short videos in the target news.
We compared, and one of the videos with the highest overlap rate was a video released by self-made weapons on July 11, 2019, with the text of a gas canister with a bomb in a homemade gun barrel, and the whole video did not mention China.
From this, we can conclude that the 2 contents mentioned in the short 9-second video, one is a picture of a gas canister cannon, and the other is a short video of the gas canister transformed into a cannon, which does exist on the Internet, but neither the video nor the photo points to the evidence that these gas canisters are from China.
3, the post-90s guys made three hundred million yuan by selling gas cans?
In this short video, another fact is also mentioned, that is, there are post-90s guys who make three hundred million yuan by selling gas cans, who is this young man? How did he relate to such an international trade in selling gas canisters to the Middle East?
We found a clue in the media report, this guy is called Kong Deyao.
Kong Deyao, CEO of Jiangsu Minnuo Special Equipment Co., Ltd., and we also found a short introduction film for Kong Deyao.
This is a media report, the video is not marked, so it is impossible to find the time when the video was first released.
So we searched for Kong Deyao on a social platform, and we found that in fact, many media have reprinted the content of this video, and the earliest was about October 31, 2020.
After combing through, we know:
In 2015, Kong took over his family business, which used to be a gas canister.
In October 2015, he found that the e-commerce platform could carry out international business, and at the end of 2016, the first overseas order was obtained, and then his gas canister was sold overseas.
In 2017, his gas tanks were sold for the first time to the Middle East, including Yemen.
But we haven't found any information that he sold the gas canister to Syria.
From the information we can find, we still have doubts about whether Kong Deyao sold the gas canister to Syria, and even we think that it may not include Syria in the country or the main market where he mainly sells.
So how did the self-media who wrote these articles and posted these videos on the Internet first learn about Kong Deyao and how they associated him with the Gas Can cannons in Syria.
According to the information on the Internet, we found that the reason why the self-media began to report on Kong Deyao around October 2020 was because in October of that year, a Chinese e-commerce platform held an event called the New Forces Conference, and Kong Deyao won the platform's Top Ten Youth Achievement Award.
The e-commerce platform also interviewed Kong Deyao and publicized his deeds, and at this time, the name Kong Deyao entered the field of vision of self-media.
According to the e-commerce platform's report on Kong Deyao, in fact, it mentions some important information, Jiangsu Minnuo currently relies on the platform for exports 100%, and the export volume in 2020 is 300 million yuan.
A Chinese media also interviewed Kong Deyao, and we found that most of the content mentioned by the self-media came from these formal interview reports, but in the process of reporting, it was the information of Kong Deyao himself and the gas canister changed into a cannon.
Therefore, we can be sure that there is indeed a figure of "300 million", but it is not profit, but sales, that is, in 2020, the young man's Jiangsu Minnuo he company exports 300 million, accounting for 90% of Yemen's gas canister market, and he exports through the e-commerce platform.
But when we contacted this e-commerce platform, the e-commerce platform replied to us that their market in the global international trade market is in addition to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, Egypt, Crimea, other regions can be exported.
That is to say, through the e-commerce platform, it is impossible for this young man to sell his gas canisters to Syria.
After the investigation of the "News Verification Group", it was found that there were cannons converted from gas canisters on the battlefield in Syria, and it was true that a Chinese post-90s guy sold China's gas canisters to overseas markets in the Middle East, but "the Chinese guys sold China's gas canisters to Syria to become cannons and made money", which is a complete misreading.
Therefore, "China's gas canisters were sold to the Middle East to be converted into cannons, the power is amazing, and the post-90s guys made three hundred million yuan" is a fake news.
Editor of this issue: Yang Xinye
Investigator: Haoran Ma
Text Editor: Wu Yanan Yu Erya