French Senator Alain Richard, former French Defense Minister
French media revealed on the 15th that the Chinese Communist Ambassador to France, Alain Roussano, sent a letter to Richard, chairman of the French Senate’s Friendship Group for Taiwan, asking him to cancel the congressional delegation to Taiwan that he was organizing. It is reported that Richard is very dissatisfied with this and will give a clear reply.
According to a report by La Lettre A, a French online media outlet specializing in exclusive political and economic intelligence, Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shano sent a harsh and sarcastic letter about Taiwan on February 18 to Senator Richard Li of France’s ruling party, La Republique en Marche. Alain Richard, a senator from the ruling French party La Republique en Marche. It is said that Roussano learned from the French Senate’s website that the Senate’s Friends of Taiwan group is preparing a congressional mission to Taiwan this summer to examine Taiwan’s exemplary measures to combat the 2019 Chinese Communist virus disease
In this long letter, Chinese Communist Ambassador to France Lu Shano informed Richard that he condemned the trip because it would threaten the status quo between Beijing and Taipei. “There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.” In his view, the Friends of Taiwan Group’s mission to Taiwan would not only undermine this principle, but would send the wrong message to the forces of Taiwan independence. Roussano unabashedly asked the former French defense minister (1997-2002) to avoid any kind of official contact with the Taiwanese authorities in the future.
In response to the report, the representative of Taiwan’s representative office in France, Wu Zhizhong, said in an interview with the Central News Agency that the Republic of China, as a sovereign and independent country, has the right to interact with members of national parliaments, and that mutual visits between Taiwan and the French parliament have been taking place for years. Richard is a member of Parliament and a friend of Taiwan whom we admire very much, he was invited to visit Taiwan in 2015 and 2018; in 2019 Richard invited for the first Time in the name of the Senate the cross-party members of the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan to visit the French Parliament, which is of historical significance.
Wu Zhizhong said: the interaction between Taiwan and France has been normalized through the efforts of the representative office, and the Chinese ambassador has no right to say anything.
According to the “Alphabet A” report, the tone of Roussano’s letter is very displeasing to Richard and the French Senate’s Friends of Taiwan group will give a clear response to the Chinese ambassador. Antoine Bondaz, a researcher at the French Foundation for Strategic Studies (FRS), tweeted: “This letter is an unacceptable intervention of the Chinese Communist Party in our democracy. Our senators are free to meet with everyone they see fit. Beijing is not allowed to tell our elected officials what to do, let alone one of their diplomats.
In April 2020, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned Roussano to take note of some of the inappropriate statements published in the official website of the Chinese Communist Party’s embassy,” said the Central News Agency.
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