Who is Lu Shaye, the Chinese Ambassador to France whom Beijing has “distancing” from?
The Chinese ambassador to France, leader of the “Wolves Warriors”, questioned the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics
A new diplomatic escapade
In an interview with LCI on Monday, April 24, Lu Shaye confirmed “that the countries of the former USSR have no effective status under international law because there is no international agreement to concretise their status as sovereign countries.” This calls into question Crimea’s affiliation with Ukraine. This dispute has forced China, which does not like to act under pressure or lose face, to contradict its ambassador based in Paris. Mao Ning, spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters: “China respects the sovereign status of republics. born after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991. A reversal that risks pushing the ambassador out of the loop.
A booming career
Lu Shaye was born into an educated family whose parents were doctors. As a child, he narrowly escaped the re-education camps during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He enjoys French culture and is a good student who quickly attracts attention. He started his career at the Chinese embassy in Guinea, worked a lot on China’s relations with Africa, in the foreign ministry and as ambassador to Senegal. He became deputy mayor in the now infamous city of Wuhan in 2014 and 2015. In 2017 he became ambassador to Canada before joining the renowned French embassy in 2019.
A provocative and astute diplomat
Lu Shaye is the leader of China’s “Wolves Warriors” or battle wolves. We recall the 2019 attack on the Canadian government, which he accused of “Western selfishness and white supremacy” for advising Canadian authorities to negotiate a free trade deal with China rather than “bowing down to concerned Canadian journalists.” Human rights”. In France during the pandemic, he also stated that nurses “quit their posts overnight (…) and left their residents to die of hunger and disease”. He later justified himself by saying that he was used by Spanish and not French nurses speak.
By the time he arrived in France, he had fallen out with a French researcher, Antoine Bondaz, over a project to visit French parliamentarians in Taiwan. The ambassador had referred to the researcher as a “little strike”, “mad hyena”, “ideological troll”, vocabulary that prompted the Quai d’Orsay to summon the ambassador immediately, which had not happened since the Tian’anmen protests since 1989. Lu Shaye is considered an experienced and adept diplomat, but has also been criticized for his sometimes aggressive rhetoric and his relentless defense of Chinese politics. Double-edged diplomacy, because this time France could expel the diplomat if China doesn’t call him back.
