The French weekly “le Point” revealed on Feb. 26 that the Chinese government had extended its tentacles into universities and society, causing an outcry, and the former dean of law at the University of Strasbourg, Mester, resigned immediately.
According to the Central News Agency, the French weekly “le Point” revealed on February 26 that the Chinese government has extended its tentacles into universities and society, causing an outcry, and the former dean of law of the University of Strasbourg, Mester, resigned immediately. The Chinese Embassy in France tried to stop the bleeding by posting a propaganda film on Xinjiang on the first, but it had a negative effect.
According to “le Point”, the former dean of the law school of the University of Strasbourg, Christian Mestre, not only publicly endorsed China’s concentration camp policy, but also through the Confucius Institute and close contact with China, and even influence the region and China’s investment cooperation, including the possible promotion of huawei in The Central News Agency (CNA) said that according to the Global Times
The Central News Agency said that, according to the Global Times, Meister publicly stated during a seminar in China in 2019 that the Uyghur Muslim minority was “not in prison, but in a mandatory vocational training course. Meister told the Global Times that the threat of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang is serious, and that Education camps are the answer to avoid the growth of terrorism, hoping that France and European countries can learn from Xinjiang.
Meister is a well-known academic and ethics officer for the Eurométropole de strasbourg, which oversees official discipline and conflicts of interest. The report caused an uproar, and Meister immediately resigned from his position as ethics officer.
In an interview with France 3, Antoine Bondaz, a researcher at the French Foundation for Strategic Studies (FRS), said that “the report is not just exposing Beijing‘s influence at the University of Strasbourg, but in all universities, through some of the professors or the upper echelons”. According to Antoine Bondaz, Beijing has been trying to influence opinion leaders in civil society around the world for the past few years. Meister is one example in France, but there are other cases, such as that of French academic and journalist Maxime Vivas. “The aim is to convince people at Home and abroad that there are people who support the Communist Party and to create networks abroad that benefit Chinese interests and present a view against the Western model to developing countries.” Poindazi stressed that it is not to end cooperation with China, but to pay more attention to assessing the risks that France and China may pose in academic research cooperation.
In an exclusive interview with French media, Jérémy André Florès, the special correspondent in Asia who uncovered the incident, said that it was not the problem of the academic or the researcher, but only a moral flaw, if any. The fault lies in the fact that the powers that be have no framework and no legal regulations, such as the declaration of income for activities abroad.
According to the report, the Chinese Consulate General in Strasbourg refuted the report of the key weekly “le Point”, saying that anti-Chinese forces are abusing the influence of the media to “attack public opinion against people involved in normal exchanges and cooperation in the field of humanities, with the intention of creating a chilling effect. “He also called on “individual French political parties not to be biased and spread the so-called ‘Xinjiang genocide theory'” and not to “deliberate on the internal affairs of other countries and interfere in their internal affairs. The Chinese Embassy in France also called on “individual political parties in France not to listen to and believe the so-called ‘genocide theory’ spread in Xinjiang” and not to “make vain comments and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. The Chinese embassy in France also posted an animated video on its Twitter account on the 1st in an attempt to stop the bleeding, reading: “The so-called ‘forced labor’ in Xinjiang is a farce to defame China. The video said that under the Communist Party’s policy, Uyghurs were not only free to choose their professions, but their living and salary standards had increased dramatically, while the Uyghurs had lost their jobs due to U.S. sanctions against Chinese cotton.
After the video was posted, it triggered criticism from political figures, and a large number of netizens expressed disbelief, with nearly 4,000 retweets in one day, almost unanimously negative comments.
Nathalie Loiseau, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defense, retweeted: “First, torturing the Uighur people; second, not truly reflecting the current situation in Xinjiang; third, treating the outside world like children who want to hear stories before bedtime. Really, the Communists hit all at once.” Marie Pierre Vedrenne, Vice President of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, criticized, “This propaganda film by the Chinese Embassy in France reaches a new peak of denial and shame. The EU should react and remind that access to the European market has a price: respect for our standards and values.”
Romain Caillet, an adviser on Islamic issues, said in a mocking tone, “Not only are the people who made this propaganda film idiots, but they think we are more idiotic than they are.”
The Central News Agency said that following French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian’s condemnation of China’s “institutional oppression” of the Uighurs at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on the 24th, and President Emmanuel Macron’s suspected failure to mention the Uighurs in a call with Xi Jinping on the 25th. The issue of Xinjiang’s education camps continues to fester in French public opinion after the Uighur human rights issue.
(Original title: French academics wary of Chinese infiltration, ethics official resigns in Spurg)
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