Image of expressway in China peddled as Jammu National Highway 44

By: Praveen Kumar
June 30 2023

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Context

An image of winding roads and an overlapping flyover in a mountainous area has been shared on Twitter, claiming that it shows Jammu's National Highway 44 (NH-44). The caption being shared with the image claims that India’s opposition is “blind to the development” of such roadways.

NH-44 is a highway that runs from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, and the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway is the northernmost segment.

According to the Jammu and Kashmir government, the NH-44 project is supposed to provide “all-weather connectivity from Jammu to the Kashmir valley” and reduce the journey time from Jammu to Srinagar and strategic border areas in the state.

However, the viral image does not show an Indian national highway.

In Fact

Reverse image results led us to a post on the information-sharing platform Virily dated January 1, 2020. The viral image is included in the post titled “Beautiful view of CPEC,” which talks about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It does not specify the location shown in the image. However, a watermark on the image in Chinese says “Visual China.”

Another reverse image search result led us to a gallery of images by the Chinese news website Caixin Global titled “China Has Big Plans for Highway Expansion,” published on July 27, 2022. A wider version of the viral image is part of the slideshow, and its description reads, “The Weiyuan-Wudu expressway in Northwest China's Gansu province opened to traffic in 2020.” It also credited the photo to VCG (Visual China Group).

Further searches led us to articles on the Chinese search engine Baidu’s blogging platform Baijiahao. We found a couple of articles by different authors that included the viral image. One of the articles is dated November 8, 2020, and talks about the development projects in Weiyuan county. The other one is dated April 4, 2020, and talks about the picturesque places in the Gansu region.

According to the Chinese government, the Longnan section of the Weiyuan-Wudu Expressway opened for trial operation on January 1, 2020. The Weiyuan-Wudu Expressway is an important section of the National Expressway (G75), the Xinhua news agency report said. 

We also located the place in the viral image on Google Earth. It is part of the National Expressway G75, as mentioned in the Chinese government announcement. On the map, the roads and flyovers featured in the viral image can be seen winding across the Bailong River next to the Lianghekou village area.

We could not find any similar images of winding roads and overlapping flyovers related to India’s NH-44. The above evidence from different sources proves that the picture is of an expressway in China.

The Verdict

An image of an expressway in Northwest China’s Gansu province has been incorrectly shared to claim that it shows a section of India’s National Highway 44 running through Jammu. Therefore, we have marked this claim false.