Beijing is clandestinely seeking to make Western politics more China-friendly by working on enlisting seasoned politicians, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has said, with a prominent case involving a senior far-right lawmaker in the European Parliament.
The head of the Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Thomas Haldenwang, warned of a wider trend in recent years of Western politicians being approached by China to aid its causes.
Asked by Euractiv, he said that “China is very interested in cultivating a China-friendly climate [in Germany] to keep [its political intelligence gathering] under the radar.”
“Ageing, well-known politicians and also business leaders are approached and courted with nice trips to China and special treatment with the expectation that they will convey a friendly image of China,” Haldenwang told reporters on Tuesday (18 October).
One of the politicians under suspicion of questionable links with China is Maximilian Krah, an MEP for the far-right AfD and its designated top candidate for the European election in 2024.
Krah has been accused of taking sponsored trips to China and of attending events linked to the CCP, t-online reported, revealing that Krah has close connections with people involved in Chinese influence-peddling.
Despite his political leanings, Krah has taken relatively China-friendly positions, including admiring statements about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and advocating trade with China as a way to counter American influence and protect Germany’s economy.
However, as a relatively fresh face, Krah is an atypical case, since Beijing tends to prefer so-called “Grey Beards” – seasoned, influential parliamentarians and business leaders.
Krah himself told t-online that he did not see any conflicts of interest in his behaviour.
China targets European politics
Such Chinese activities mark a shift from previous strategies that focused on industrial espionage. Beijing is increasingly moving towards targeting politics as the geopolitical situation is heating up, which has also been noted outside of Germany.
“We see the Chinese authorities playing the long game in cultivating contacts to manipulate opinion in China’s favour,” the Director General of Britain’s MI5 Ken McCallum warned in a speech on the state of British security last year.
The Times revealed recently that the British Conservative Party had dropped two would-be MPs from its list in 2021 and 2022 after tip-offs from MI5 that they might be spies.
Haldenwang also pointed out that the French DGSI was concerned about Chinese activities.
European agencies are in close contact about the issue, he said, adding that it was ultimately important “to strengthen awareness” of the problem among potential targets.
[Edited by Oliver Noyan/Zoran Radosavljevic]
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Source: euractiv.com
