The intruder of the news gives each evening a spotlight on a personality who could have passed under the radars of the news.
It was on LCI Friday, April 21. The Chinese ambassador to France was invited to comment on Emmanuel Macron’s comments on Taiwan. But it was in Ukraine that he created the most stir. He began by repeating Vladimir Putin’s speech on the fact that Crimea historically belongs to Russia. Ultimately, this was almost expected. But Lu Shaye went so far as to challenge the sovereignty of all the states that emerged from the former USSR – Ukraine, but also Armenia, Georgia and even the three Baltic countries. “These countries, former Soviet Union, do not have effective status in international law, because there are no international agreements to concretize their status as a sovereign country.assures the Chinese ambassador in France. We shouldn’t quibble about this kind of problem yet. The most urgent thing is to achieve the ceasefire.”
>>> War in Ukraine: we summarize for you the diplomatic “crisis” created by the ambassador in France after his remarks on Crimea and the countries of the former USSR
Darius Rochebin, who interviews him that day on LCI, notes the word “quibble” on Crimea, emphasizing that if we amputated part of China, he would probably not accept that we say “we argue”. There follows a rather striking silence of several seconds: the ambassador grabs his glass, takes the time to take a sip of water and ends up explaining that these are subjects “not so easy to describe in a few words” and you need to know “the ins and outs”. We won’t know any more.
The diplomacy of the “fighter wolves”
All the countries concerned protested, but also France and Europe. Many wondered if it was an uncontrolled or voluntary skid. In reality, this ambassador has the reputation of being tough. The Chinese themselves speak of a diplomacy of “fighter wolves” with this uninhibited speech against all those who criticize China on the international scene.
Lu Shaye is 58 years old. He has a son who works in aviation in China. He himself is a middle-class Chinese child with medical parents. He was born in 1964, just before the Cultural Revolution which ended when he arrived in college. His father was still in prison during this period, but he did not harbor any particular resentment. In any case, that did not prevent him from entering the Communist Youth League. His career, he probably owes it to his teachers who, somewhat by chance, sent him to study French at the college of foreign languages in Nanjing. He is passionate about literature. After the baccalaureate, the Gaokao, he was not taken in European literature in Beijing, but at the institute of diplomacy where the courses on colonization and independence will visibly mark him, which partly explains these criticisms against the colonizing and moralizing West.
As he speaks French, he is sent very quickly to Africa. He obtained his first job at the age of 25 in Guinea at the end of the 80s: it was the time of Tiananmen. he visits dozens of countries, he will even have functions in Paris, in the early 2000s, before his first real post as ambassador, in Senegal, in 2006. Overall he has also worked a lot on China / Africa relations .
A regular at controversial statements
Lu Shaye is quite accustomed to sensational outings like the one this weekend on the former Soviet republics. At the beginning of 2019, he was ambassador in Ottawa, when Huawei’s financial director was arrested in Canada. The Chinese telecom giant is suspected of exporting American products to Iran in violation of sanctions imposed by Washington. And the ambassador publishes a tribune where he shouts at “Western selfishness” and at “white supremacy”.
Shortly after his arrival in France in July 2019, Lu Shaye was summoned to the Quai d’Orsay at the start of the Covid crisis for having written in the embassy newspaper that nursing staff had left “to die their residents of hunger and disease”. In March 2021, he was unleashed against the researcher Antoine Bondaz, who criticized China about Taiwan: he called him a “little punch”of mad hyena” and of “ideological troll.”
Monday, April 24 in the afternoon, he had a long-standing appointment at the Quai d’Orsay with the minister’s chief of staff Catherine Colona, who says he has “take note of Beijing’s clarifications” on the fact that “Lu Shaye had spoken on a personal basis…” It should be noted, however, that Lu Shaye is far from being abandoned by everyone in Beijing, since at the same time the editorialist of the GlobalTimes, A tabloid which has the blessing of the regime, writes for example that France would be well advised to protect the “freedom of expression” of this ambassador.