The Chinese ambassador to France, Mr. Lu Shanno, unsuccessfully requested the cancellation of the French senator’s visit to Taiwan. The Chinese Embassy in France has again exploded French public opinion by calling French scholar Antoine Bondaz a “hooligan”, which has led to condemnation from political and academic circles.
The incident has shocked French academics, politicians and even civil society, because France has never seen a diplomat of a country swear at a scholar in particular. The French newspaper Le Monde reported, “This is the first Time the Chinese embassy has attacked a French scholar by name.”
The incident is still related to Ambassador Roussano’s unsuccessful letter to Alain Richard, chairman of the French Senate’s Friends of Taiwan group, in February, asking him to cancel the legislators’ visit to Taiwan. The French government rejected the Chinese ambassador’s request on the grounds that France has a separation of powers and that parliamentarians have the right to visit the countries they wish to visit and to contact those they wish to contact.
The letter from Roussano is an unacceptable interference in French democracy, as our senators are free to decide on their travel plans and have the freedom to meet anyone they wish,” tweeted Bondazi, a leading French academic, China expert and researcher at the French Foundation for Strategic Studies (FRS), on March 16. Beijing has no right to tell French elected officials what to do, let alone a diplomat.
On March 19, the Chinese embassy attacked the scholar by name, calling him a “hooligan” in a tweet. Bondazi, who speaks frequently on China, learned of the attack on him from several friends a year ago when the Chinese embassy in France smeared his account.
On March 19, Le Monde prominently published the story ‘Chinese embassy in Paris attacks a French researcher, calling him a “hooligan”‘, which then went viral and spread all over the Internet. The article begins: In a sudden reappearance of war-wolf diplomacy, the Chinese Embassy in Paris tweeted that Bondaz, a researcher at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, was a “hooligan.
French public opinion was first surprised and then outraged when the Chinese embassy in France was accused of insulting a scholar in the host country without regard for minimum diplomatic dignity and etiquette, with French MEPs unanimously supporting the scholar from both left and right, and asking the French Foreign Ministry to summon Luciano and issue a stern warning.
MEP Raphel glucksmann denounced, “If our government leaders have any dignity and national consciousness, they should immediately summon the Chinese ambassador and then explain to him sternly: ‘If you continue to spill your guts, go back to China immediately’, at At some point, one can no longer turn a blind eye, one must straighten one’s neck.”
Another MEP, François-Xavier Bellamy, shouted directly at Foreign Minister Le Drian in a tweet: “The Chinese embassy insulted a renowned scholar and warned people to listen to Beijing, dear Le Drian, not to let this go, that would be cowardly and dangerous. “
Macron’s former minister, MEP Nathalie Loiseau, tweeted, “Rarely have I seen a diplomat do so much damage to the image of his country. Rude, rude, this is the China you are showing.”
French Senator Valérie Boyer supported the scholar saying, “The Chinese embassy alleges that the French scholar is a small hooligan, does the Chinese embassy know that France is a country that respects scholars and we cherish freedom and fraternity.”
In a tweet in support of Bondazi, Marc Epstein, a prominent French ‘Express’ journalist, said in response to the Chinese Embassy’s boorish approach, “The essence of one-party dictatorship is violence.”
Pascal Boniface, a leading French political scientist, said, “I don’t always agree with Bondaz’s views on China, but I can’t accept an embassy insulting a French academic because freedom of expression must be protected and the intolerability of their practices is worrying.”
The pro-Bondaz tweets quickly flew around, with Twitter even tweeting the “We’re all hooligans” logo, under which a scholar from the “China and Africa and Latin America Research Group” at the French Higher School of Social Sciences wrote: “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Mr. Ambassador, you have brought the French academy together!”
The reaction of netizens was also quite unanimous, with one calling himself Vendredi writing that the Chinese ambassador was behaving like an ambassador of a hostile dictatorship, comparable to some diplomats of the Third Reich or Stalin’s men.
Another, Rien N, argued that “the performance of the Chinese embassy highlights the true face of China. When a diplomat speaks like this, it is his government speaking through him.” But another contributur1234 said, “This is just a certain true image of China, an arrogant and arrogant party-state group. The good thing is, it doesn’t represent most of the well-educated Chinese I’ve come across. I hope they will soon be able to get rid of this group of leaders that shames them.”
Another, called jamaiscontent, said, “The ambassador is actually cowardly, knowing that he doesn’t need to take too many risks to insult a scholar. But by doing so, he insulted his own undeserving people and, through his crude language, gave the false impression that even China’s elite could not master a few decent words.”
In an interview with the host of French TV5’s “C dans l’air” about the insults he received from the Chinese embassy, Bondazi said, “Calling me a ‘hooligan’ doesn’t affect my work. But what is worrying is the arbitrary use of such crude rhetoric (by the Chinese embassy) in a foreign country, and the fact that the Chinese ambassador is free to abuse journalists and parliamentarians on French soil.”
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