More than 40 people have been confirmed dead, and 80,000 residents have been evacuated across Beijing due to widespread flooding. Bellingcat used public sources to begin to track the damage. www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/08...
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a warming planet is a messy place,.
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We used satellite imagery to assess the impact on both urban and rural areas. On social media, however, a deluge of AI-generated fakes have continued to draw far more views than many genuine eyewitness videos.
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Searching in English, the results for #beijingflood on YouTube Shorts revealed multiple AI-generated thumbnails, one of which surpassed 18 million views.
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By comparison, Chinese social media platforms, including Baidu’s Haokan Video, Weibo and Douyin appeared to display very few AI-generated videos. Instead, the vast majority appeared to be genuine posts documenting the real-world impact of the floods.
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In northeast Beijing, the highest death toll was recorded in the town of Taishitun. Thirty-one of the confirmed fatalities were from an elderly care home situated near the banks of the Qingshui River, which runs through the town.
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Across Hebei Province, which neighbours Beijing, agricultural land was heavily affected. In Jiuying Village, more than 1,300 hectares of farmland, much of it low-lying cornfields, was submerged, according to Reuters.
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