Thread by @METhorley

1/9 There's a widening gulf between business concerns & traditional state concerns on China in tech. It emerged today that Huawei & Alibaba are sponsoring Europe's Gaia-X cloud computing event. But a far smaller story from France this morning better illustrates this phenomenon🇫🇷

2/9 @Intel_Online reported that Chinese semiconductor group FATRI (西人马) is now making solid headway in France thanks to connections in Airbus and the French Parliament. intelligenceonline.com/corporate-inte…

3/9 The growing gulf between state and business concerns is captured by events that took place in September this year. First, in France Paul Cheron & @jeangene_vilmer published a substantial & well-received report on Chinese party-state influence. rfi.fr/en/internation…

4/9 The same month, the aforementioned Chinese tech group FATRI hired Norbert Ducrot, a senior executive and previously Beijing-based President & CEO Airbus Helicopters China for 15 years. In 2017, Ducrot also set up a consulting company...

5/9 in Hong Kong "to help large and medium-sized global companies in their industrial and commercial development in Asia and more specifically in China". Ducrot is a well-respected and well-connected man, and now lends his talents to FATRI.

6/9 But who is Ducrot now working for specifically? Reports show that he is reporting to 聂泳忠 (Bill Nie). Nie visited France in 2019 having decided to set up a base for FATRI in Île-de-France.

7/9 Here, Bill Nie (centre) meets with Jean-Michel Mis (right), during that 2019 visit. Mis is a French politician with En Marche, serving as a member of the National Assembly since 2017 and Vice-President of the Cybersecurity and Digital Sovereignty Study Group.

8/9 And here is Bill Nie in China. Naturally, for someone in a role of such importance, Nie is enmeshed in the party-state. In this case as a member of the Quanzhou CPPCC.
This channel, from Chinese party-state to western policymaker via business linkages, is a common pathway.

9/9 The big stories like Huawei & Alibaba at Gaia are obviously important, but connections such as the one illustrated above are extremely common and to some extent form the architecture around wider interaction. Moving forward, understanding such linkages will be crucial.