Klaus Schwab “publicly admitted he is planning to implement China-style forced COVID lockdowns all over the world during the ‘next pandemic.’”

A spate of social media posts have recently vested the World Economic Forum with far more power than it actually has. 

So far this month, we’ve debunked claims that the nonprofit, which holds annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss global commerce and political concerns, banned natural conception and is requiring a microchip that will “end gun ownership in America.”

Now, a July 24 Instagram post says that Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum’s founder and executive chairman, “publicly admitted he is planning to implement China-style forced COVID lockdowns all over the world during the ‘next pandemic.’” 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Schwab doesn’t have the authority to implement a global lockdown, and the Instagram post offers no evidence that he announced such a plan. 

The post features a video and two images: the trailer for the movie 2020 COVID-19-inspired movie “Songbird,” a picture of Schwab and an image of Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.

The World Economic Forum didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about this post. 

But we looked for and found no news reports or other credible sources suggesting that Schwab said he plans to implement global forced lockdowns during the next pandemic. Maybe because he can’t. 

This claim may have originated with a July 23 tweet that said, “Klaus Schwab Just PUBLICLY ADMITTED He Is Planning To Implement China-Style Forced Covid Lockdowns ALL OVER THE WORLD During The ‘Next Pandemic’ Which He ‘EXPECTS’ To Happen Soon.” 

A YouTube video from what appears to be the same user focuses on something Schwab said during a speech at the 2023 World Government Summit in February: “The capability to bounce back,” Schwab said, “because there will be certainly what we call the black swans, the unpleasant surprises, which will come our way.” 

The narrator then accuses Schwab of “trying to implement China-style policies all over the world for these black swan events that he knows he’s coming in part because he’s playing a role in them.”

That hardly amounts to proof Schwab said he’s planning to implement a global lockdown.

We rate that claim False.