Fact review. Beijing launched a massive mobilization and called “all reservists” to report to the barracks?

The text was published on February 12 on the Brazilian website “Hoje no Mundo Militar” and since then it has been disseminated on various Facebook accounts and pages, always with the same title: “Unprecedented call: China orders all its reservists that they present themselves before their military”. districts: women are included”.

Throughout the article, which is reproduced in its entirety in the publications shared on social networks, it can be read that a “massive call” is being carried out in that country and that messages will be sent to Chinese citizens over 18 years of age —”women included”. It will probably be, the text continues, “the largest national defense mobilization in Chinese history.”

“After receiving the call notice, the reservists must report immediately to the designated place from a certain time according to the requirements,” explains the author of the article, Bárbara Martinelli, according to the small profile shared on the site, Bachelor of Business Administration, Master’s student in International Politics and “specialist in global conflict resolution and geopolitics.”

Also according to the text signed by Martinelli, reservists who have not yet received the summons to appear at their respective posts will not be able to leave that area “without the approval of the troops and military service corps of the place of registration.” . More than that: if they have done so in the meantime, the order is to return “immediately.”

As Major General Arnaut Moreira points out to the Observer, if China really did have the biggest military mobilization in its history underway, it would be news that would “certainly deserve a strong reaction from world leaders.”

Well, not only is it impossible to find news about these reactions on the Internet; There is absolutely no news published about such a mobilization, neither in Portuguese, nor in English, nor even in simplified Chinese whose translation is provided by Google.

The exercise, which was carried out by the Observer, is validated by the statements of Arnaut Moreira, Director of Communications and Information Systems of the Army between 2013 and 2016, former Deputy Director General of National Defense Policy and former Chief of Staff of the former Minister of National Defense José Pedro Aguiar-Branco. “Of the many things I read, I had no trace. The absence of information, in this case, is an indication that perhaps there was a misinterpretation of something”, the major general tries to explain.

The text refers to the approval of the reservist law in China – which effectively took place on December 30, 2022 and entered into force on March 1 of this year – with the aim of facilitating the mobilization of reservists. But there is no mention in any of its 65 articles, divided into 10 chapters, that all those over 18, men or women, must report to the barracks, as stated in the article published in “Today in the Military World”. — a website that Arnaut Moreira also says he is not familiar with.

The division general believes that the text published in the meantime on social networks may have arisen from a “misinterpretation” of this new law. “It could come from there, but, in my reading, this seems to me more an administrative issue of the operation of the Armed Forces than a change in China’s strategic position in relation to reservists,” says the expert.

Conclusion

It is not true that China has summoned all the reservists to report to the barracks and has started the largest military mobilization in its history. There is no published news on the subject, nor reactions from world leaders. In the reservist law, which was approved at the end of last year at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress of China, there is no mention of this “mass summons” either.

Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:

MISTAKEN

In the Facebook rating system this content is:

FAKE: Main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option generally corresponds to “fake” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking sites.

NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.