False information on social media has been recognized as a key global risk. In the present study, we examined the dissociation between accuracy judgments and sharing intentions for news headlines in a Chinese media context. One hundred Chinese participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: an accuracy-evaluation group, which assessed whether headlines were true or false, and a sharing-intention group, which rated their willingness to share the same headlines. The headlines, sourced from People’s Daily (real news) and the China Internet Joint Rumor Debunking Platform (fake news). spanned three content domains: current affairs, entertainment, and health. Results showed that participants in the accuracy condition reliably distinguished between real and fake headlines, showing significantly higher accuracy ratings for real headlines across all content domains. However, participants in the sharing condition exhibited a striking truth-sharing gap: they expressed a high willingness to share many headlines that were actually false, particularly in the health domain. Notably, over 80% of participants reported that truthfulness was their top sharing criterion, yet their behavior contradicted this claim. These findings provide novel evidence (in a non-Western, non-political context) that people’s ability to discern fake news does not necessarily translate into prudent sharing behavior. Our study broadens the understanding of the accuracy–sharing dissociation phenomenon by highlighting the role of cultural context and content type, and it underscores the need for strategies (such as boosting attention to accuracy) to align social sharing behavior with truth discernment.