M6 in the secret of Chinese espionage in France

When China watches, the world will tremble. Vincent Prado could undoubtedly take up this paraphrase of the title of Alain Peyrefitte’s work, published in 1973. The director of France-China, the secret waran investigation broadcast on M6 on Sunday evening, did not expect to discover, in a year of research, so much evidence of interference. If the influence of Beijing in France has already been mentioned in documentaries, notably Covert operations from France 5 in March 2024, this is the first film entirely dedicated to this issue.

The director became interested in it when he read an article about French pilots hired by the People’s Liberation Army. A sort of mercenary recruited at great cost, through a circuit illuminated by his documentary, to accelerate the training of Chinese aviators. And reveal to them techniques that only NATO pilots know. The subject is serious enough for the Directorate of Defense Intelligence and Security (DRSD) to speak on camera to confirm the existence of this phenomenon. A first.

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Bernard de La Villardière, who produced the survey, recognizes this: « China is interested in everything : high technology, culture, information, heritage, space, air and military. » And for at least two decades in aerospace. In 2003, the Chinese presence within the European Galileo satellite launch program did not leave good memories. Now in his eighties, scientist René Oosterlinck bluntly states: « One of the engineers was spying on us. » The European Space Agency even required other internet cabling to bypass certain Chinese offices. New information collected in this survey.

Impunity

« After hours of interviews, secrets end up being confided and USB keys fall from the sky »smiles Vincent Prado, used to handling tricky files. He was briefly arrested by Kazakh authorities in 2018, during a report. A fate that a dissident failed to experience last year at… Kremlin-Bicêtre. Gulbahar Jalilova, a Uighur refugee in France, received a courtesy visit to her home the day after Xi Jinping’s official visit. These were, to all appearances, emissaries of the Chinese Communist Party. The goons didn’t even bother to be discreet.

Conversely, some French students learning Mandarin keep a low profile when asked about the country’s politics. Beijing’s susceptibility is public knowledge. The students from China know this well and don’t say a word about it either. « They even write reports on each other »says Vincent Prado. Who adds: « We had to complete this documentary with the testimony of a Chinese student who expressed his pride in helping his country in this way. » He canceled his order at the last moment.

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This investigation, of which we will regret the voice-over with its alarmist tone, can serve as a wake-up call, even if the era of naivety seems partly over. This is evidenced by a habit adopted by the short-lived Minister of National Education and former Member of Parliament for French Abroad, Anne Genetet, who does not travel to China without a protective pouch for her phone or computer. The information they contain would, we understand, be siphoned off without fail by an invisible hand…