‘For They Have Sown The Wind, and They Shall Reap the Whirlwind’ - China’s Twiplomacy and its Repercussion in France

This paper examines China’s official Twitter diplomacy, a.k.a. Twiplomacy, in France in the COVID-19 era (I), its repercussions on the French government’s response to China (II), as well as China’s image in the French media and public opinion (III). Throughout the 2010s, as the Chinese economic interests in Europe including France became more visible and concerned virtually every sector, think tanks, governments and the media advocated the securitization of the Chinese economic presence through a ‘China threat’ narrative, calling to exercise anticipatory thinking, capabilities and resilience. Amidst a climate of mounting tension and distrust, His Excellency Lu Shaye took office as the new Chinese Ambassador to France and Monaco in July 2019; in August, the Chinese embassy in Paris opened its Twitter account, @AmbassadeChine, aimed at promoting the values and outlook of China through soft power and public diplomacy, a long-term goal for Beijing’ foreign policy. However, as the COVID-19 spread to the globe, began a battle of narratives between states, arguing over responsibility and failures, while taking credit for their successes in aid and vaccine diplomacy, which, to many extents, is reminiscent of the language of the Cold War, in terms of structure, tropes, vocabularies and visuality. Based on computational dataanalytical methods, this paper argues that the Tweets and retweets of @AmbassadeChine and Lu Shaye’s interviews in the French media, became a sharp power communication tool to enhance Beijing’s political messaging, and assert the Chinese perspective on the pandemic and other contemporary issues, illustrative of China’s authoritarian populism and the strategic rivalry between the PRC and the EU’ normative power. The tough and at times offensive words used by the Chinese compelled the French government to call Lu to order. As the world is still battling with the pandemic, the brutal ordering of Hong Kong SAR and the fate of the Uighurs further antagonized the Europeans and the French vis-à-vis China. While public opinion surveys reveal that the attraction for China has reached a historic low, our social constructivist framing analysis of the French media across the political spectrum, argues that the cumulation of aggressive Twiplomacy, coupled with the authoritarian control in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, will continue to weigh on China’s ability to influence preferences through attraction or persuasion, at least in liberal democracies and France in particular.