French Politician Has ‘Extensive Links’ With CCP Influence Agencies, Report Says

French Member of Parliament Buon-Huong Tan arrives at The Elysee Palace in Paris on Feb. 16, 2018, where he was invited by French President Emmanuel Macron to celebrate Chinese New Year. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

A member of French Parliament Buon Tan has maintained “extensive links” to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence agencies, a recent report by Czech-based think tank Sinopsis detailed.

The report found that Tan, who is a member of the ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party, has links to six organizations managed by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “United Front” system, a body charged with overseeing the regime’s overseas influence efforts.

The report also found that Tan has consistently acted in Beijing’s interest, saying that the politician has “the closest relationship to the CCP of any French MP [Member of Parliament].”

Tan is a prominent figure in French politics, whose many roles include acting as the current president of the France-China friendship commission in the National Assembly, French Parliament’s lower house, as well as secretary of the Foreign Affairs Commission. His position in the commission gives him oversight of matters related to China and Northeast Asia.

Moreover, Tan has launched and co-directed an “information mission” tasked with analyzing the China policy of France and European nations generally.

In the report’s analysis, Tan has also aided the Chinese regime’s state-backed technology transfer efforts, programs which have received growing scrutiny in the West for their role in facilitating the flow of foreign intellectual property and know-how to China.

Acting in CCP’s Interests

In February, a parliamentary report commissioned and co-authored by Tan himself was marred by sharp differences during its research phase. Tan and co-rapporteur Bérengère Poletti agreed on so little that they considered releasing their own separate sets of recommendations rather than doing so jointly. Poletti came to hold the view that Tan viewed France’s relationship with China more in economic than in political terms, the report stated.

The document that the two co-rapporteurs produced called for “rebalancing” France’s relationship with China and for not acting in concert with the United States on China-related matters, particularly Taiwan and competition with China, because, America is engaged in a fight of its own that need not involve France. The report produced by Tan and Poletti did not address security or human rights issues in any of its 48 recommendations.

The Sinopsis report described Tan as a politician who walks a fine line, advancing CCP interests without parroting communist propaganda too closely.

“Buon Tan refrains from overtly taking up CCP talking points, but his behavior is largely aligned with Beijing’s interests on issues the CCP views as highly sensitive,” it stated.

The report noted that in January, Tan was the sole French MP who voted against a motion declaring Beijing’s conduct toward the Uyghur minority of western China to be genocide.

In November 2021, when a bill calling for Taiwan to participate in international organizations came to a vote on the National Assembly floor, Tan abstained. Later when playing host to China’s ambassador in the National Assembly, Tan described the Taiwan bill, which bore the signatures of nearly 200 parliamentary representatives, as the work of a few members.

Moreover, when Beijing’s response to COVID-19 and the CCP’s possible role in the outbreak was under discussion in April 2020, Tan and another LREM representative Pierre Person praised China for “active international cooperation and control of the pandemic,” the report noted.

Technology Transfer

The report emphasized Tan’s role as chief advisor of Développement France-Chine (DFC), which it described as an organization devoted to promoting Beijing’s efforts to transfer technology and recruit talent from abroad.

DFC has a “close relationship” with the “Conference on Overseas Chinese Pioneering and Developing in China,” according to the report, which described the conference as a tool with which local Chinese governments identify and seek to lure technologies and investments from abroad. The report cited the official conference website, whose figures indicate that nearly 20,000 overseas ethnic Chinese took part in the 2018 conference, at which participants signed 2,300 contracts for technology projects or the onboarding of new talent.

As recently as 2020, the DFC opened an office in eastern China’s Hangzhou city and entered an arrangement whereby it would help a local Chinese government lure talent from Europe.

“While governments often seek to attract talent from abroad, the Chinese government’s talent-recruitment efforts are strongly associated with misconduct and opaque technology transfer,” the report stated.

Unified Front 

Tan has been a member of major United Front groups since 2008, and his affiliation with these groups has continued to expand after his election in 2017, according to the report. The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is a powerful agency within the CCP that oversees the regime’s efforts to expand its influence abroad, both overtly and covertly.

“Around the world, the Party’s united front system, a grouping of Chinese Party and other state agencies, builds networks among ethnic Chinese communities and seeks to lean on its associates to advance the Party’s interests abroad,” the report stated. These associates act on the CCP’s behalf while ostensibly representing the interests of people in free democratic states who voted them into office.

As examples of this tendency, they cite the activities of Christine Lee, whom British counterintelligence services in January warned played a role in political interference on the part of the UFWD.

The report also noted that near the end of 2018, Australian officials canceled the visa of Chinese real estate magnate Huang Xiangmo after allegations arose that he acted in Australia’s political realm on behalf of CCP interests.

Tan, Lee, and Huang are cut from the same cloth in the sense that all hold membership in United Front organizations, including the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), the report noted. Tan has been a member of COFA since at least 2008 and is currently an executive council member.

In 2019, Tan visited Beijing to attend a COFA meeting and another meeting of representatives of many overseas Chinese communities, the report noted. During the latter meeting, Tan occupied “a position of honor” in the first row of the representatives assembled to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and footage of the two men shaking hands aired on a primetime program of state broadcaster China Central Television, it said.

In September 2018, after his election to France’s National Assembly, another United Front group All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) appointed Tan as one of twenty overseas committee members based in France. According to the report, AFROC is heavily staffed with figures who have served as CCP cadres active in United Front organizations and “functions like a Party organ.”

“These united front ties are markers of involvement in the CCP’s activities, but the mechanisms of Party control over such individuals may be clandestine and lie outside of the united front system,” the report stated.

For all his ties to CCP-linked bodies, the report’s account of Tan described a figure who has carried out his political activities without much suspicion or scrutiny. For example, IRSEM, a think tank affiliated with the French Ministry of Defense, published a report of its own in September 2021 dealing with CCP United Front activities in France, but making no mention of Tan in all its 600 pages.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Tan’s office for comment.

In the Spotlight

While Tan’s ties to the Chinese regime’s overseas influence network have not drawn too much scrutiny, his activities have not gone entirely unnoticed. Some are skeptical of his seriousness as an LREM representative and have noted his taste for self-promotion.

“The general view is that he doesn’t do much in the way of hard work, but always turns up for ‘the photo.’ There isn’t much evidence of constituency work, nor does he seem to have much support from within the ‘community’ or the constituency,” says Paul Smith, a professor at the University of Nottingham and the author of a blog on French politics.

Whether Tan will continue to be able to advance Beijing friendly policies in French parliament may depend, to some extent, on the outcome of next month’s presidential election, where the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron will face off against challengers including Éric Zemmour, a staunch nationalist whose campaign emphasizes national security and curbing foreign influence.

“For Macron this is not a central issue, though it is for Zemmour, who keeps doubling down on his key political message as the candidate who will fight ‘le grand remplacement’ [‘the great replacement’]. In essence, he is playing the nativist card, much more even than [Monique] Le Pen, who might once have claimed that mantle,” Smith said.

Zemmour’s message resonates with many French voters concerned about foreign influence. But this is a double-edged sword, because certain nationalist politicians, including Zemmour and Le Pen, have had connections in the past with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Le Pen turned to a Russian bank to fund her campaign in 2017, Smith noted.

“The reflex among French voters since the [Ukraine] war began is to rally to the flag around the incumbent, sending his opinion poll ratings for the first round over 30 percent and his approval ratings generally to levels he has hardly seen during his term in office,” Smith said.

So the moment may not yet be propitious for a nationalist such as Zemmour who might bring about concerted action to curb the influence of United Front-linked figures like Buon Tan in French politics.