Diplomacy: feminine word designating relations between states;
in the figurative sense, it designates a matter carried out with tact.
For 18 months she has embodied the ancient world of relations between France and China, the latter having appointed the toughest of her "warrior wolves" to defend her image against any attack.
Adept at attacking as the best defense, Lu Shaye was summoned this Tuesday for the second time since his appointment to the Quai d'Orsay, for having "crossed all commonly accepted limits".
What are we talking about ?
From a series of tweets, last Friday, from the Chinese embassy in France, treating a French researcher, Antoine Bondaz, as a “small strike”?
Then of "mad hyena" and of "ideological troll".
The Asia director of the Quai d'Orsay, Bertrand Lortholary, concretely told him that the "methods of the embassy, the tone of its public communication were completely unacceptable".
Paris also made him understand that he posed as an “obstacle to the political will expressed by the heads of state of the two countries” to develop the bilateral relationship, which posed an “extremely serious problem”.
The embassy's tweets, which thus likely won him a volley of green wood, were certainly a bit above the usual tone, but this is far from the first time that Ambassador Lu Shaye has shown biting.
A sniper at the embassy
"This is not a feature of all Chinese diplomacy but a number of them, including the ambassadors currently stationed in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as the two spokespersons of the ministry Chinese Foreign Affairs, are quite aggressive on social networks and in forums, ”said Camille Brugier, researcher specializing in Chinese issues at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM).
"The previous ambassador, Zhai Jun, was more in line with what one imagines of a diplomat, maintaining cultural diplomacy, bilateral cooperation, Franco-Chinese relations in general," she sums up.
Because of the regular focus on the issue of human rights, Beijing wanted someone offensive in Paris ”.
Arrived in Paris in July 2019, Lu Shaye, an informed Francophile, first worked as an ambassador to Canada.
His vehement profile, far from the bombastic silences of national representations, necessarily caught the eye of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
As we get an idea about China, where "the Chinese people enjoy full freedom of expression", the ambassador has his on France where "there are many taboo subjects".
"Anti-Semitism, racism, the denial of the Shoah, the apology of terrorism," he enumerated on March 12 in front of Sciences Po students.
In recent weeks, the rhetoric of "reciprocity" has been at the heart of the interventions of the Chinese dignitary, after the accusations of torture and rape in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs, and the sanctions decided by several countries.
Xinjiang in the eyes of Western media pic.twitter.com/S0AiU1kzT5
- Chinese Embassy in France (@AmbassadeChine) March 4, 2021
"It is, in my opinion, a status policy that is playing out there," analyzes the researcher again: China considers very offensive, even humiliating, that the European Union and France, a small institution and a small country in her eyes, lecture him ”.
And Lu Shaye believes that France speaks too often.
In April 2020, angry that France allowed Taiwan to open an annex of its representation in Aix-en-Provence, the ambassador questioned the modernization of the frigates sold by Paris to the island, over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
A few days ago, in a vitriolic letter addressed to Senator Alain Richard, he asked him that the France-Taiwan study group in the Senate give up visiting the islet.
Previous slippages
Also last April, Lu Shaye had published, on the website of the embassy this time, a text in which he accused the staff of French nursing homes of having "collectively deserted, leaving their residents to die of hunger and disease" in full first wave of the coronavirus.
The ambassador had been summoned to the Quai d'Orsay, a first since the Tian'anmen Square massacre.
The platform was withdrawn, "proof that it sometimes receives calls for calm from Beijing," said Camille Brugier.
Politics Newsletter
Our analyzes and indiscretions on power
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
In May, the diplomat had drawn the wrath of public opinion by relaying, via the embassy account, a cartoon showing the United States as a mower, Israel being its fake, in search of a new target in Hong Kong, after bloody Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.
Faced with general indignation, the embassy pleaded piracy, without convincing.
Tweet deleted a few minutes ago by the official account of the Chinese Embassy in France @AmbassadeChine 👀https: //t.co/tTW4XWB2yC pic.twitter.com/RINIWDwxsL
- Should Not Remove 📸 (@FallaitPasSuppr) May 24, 2020
Clarification: Someone tampered with the official Chinese Embassy Twitter account by posting a cartoon titled "Who's Next?"
The Embassy wishes to condemn him and always sticks to the principle of veracity, objectivity and rationality of information.
- Chinese Embassy in France (@AmbassadeChine) May 25, 2020
Monday, in the same reaction to the letter to senators and the controversy with Antoine Bondaz, whom Beijing accuses of being affiliated with the Taiwanese cause, the Quai d'Orsay had already summoned Lu Shaye in a very dry call to order.
But he declined by citing on Twitter a problem with the agenda that no one believed in, and indicating that he would go to the Quai on Tuesday to discuss the "sanctions imposed by the EU" on Uyghurs and “Taiwan-related issues”.
Ambassador LU Shaye did not visit the French MFA today due to an agenda.
Tomorrow, he will go there to make representations to the French side on the sanctions imposed by the EU on Chinese individuals and entities and on issues related to Taiwan.
- Chinese Embassy in France (@AmbassadeChine) March 22, 2021
“Neither France nor Europe are doormats.
When one is summoned, when one is an ambassador, one goes to a summons to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Secretary of State Clément Beaune had cracked this morning on France Info.
