An XXL presidential visit under close surveillance. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in France this Monday, May 6, and spent the first day of his trip talking about international politics with Emmanuel Macron and Ursula Von der Leyen. This Tuesday, the Chinese president will travel, accompanied by Emmanuel Macron, to the Hautes-Pyrénées department and more precisely to the La Mongie ski resort.
“It’s a locus of political control.”
It is important to remember that China benefits from a strong community in France. 250,000 nationals live on French soil and most are based in Ile-de-France. A diaspora for the vast majority inserted into French economic life, particularly in Paris, with the takeover of numerous businesses and sometimes questionable methods. Because behind this lucrative economy there are in reality well-identified interests for Beijing. The Chinese regime is pushing its diaspora to invest in places of sociability, starting with tobacco bars and PMUs in the Ile-de-France region. A privileged place for collecting Chinese intelligence, since 60% is today in the hands of the Chinese community.
These businesses are bought and this is not trivial, as explained by former senator André Gattolin, a China specialist. “It is a place of political control, because we hear everything that happens with the conversations. And regularly, those responsible must go, every year, for 5 to 6 weeks to China and do two weeks of debriefing on the whole situation of the neighborhood, on a human and social level”, declared the senator from Hauts-de-Seine.
This targeted redemption system also affects massage parlors, which are often showcases of hidden prostitution. “These are all women who come from a very poor region in the north of China, Shenzhou, and the entire network is run by people from Whenzhou. They are the hubs of this illegal network,” added André Gattolin. In addition to collecting this information, buying these businesses sometimes allows the Chinese diaspora to launder money discreetly for the benefit of mafia networks directly controlled by Beijing.