China, France, Israel
Researcher prevented from taking up post at French engineering school due to alleged Chinese army links

A Chinese teacher-researcher has been prevented from taking up a post at the prestigious French engineering school, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) in Paris, where he had been due to give lectures and pursue his research work in a restricted access laboratory. The researcher, who already had a contract in Israel, applied for a long-stay "talent" visa of the kind normally granted to researchers at the French consulate general in Jerusalem. 

His application was initially refused on 5 June. He appealed against the decision to the specialised visa appeals body in Nantes in western France, which has yet to give its decision, but also took his case to the Nantes administrative court, asking it to suspend the consulate's decision and order the French authorities to grant him the visa he had applied for.

‘Risk' to French national interests

The hearing, which took place in August, revealed that a confidential note from the French intelligence services had been the cause of the refusal of the researcher's visa application. The note pointed to his links with two Chinese universities and a professor involved in military research for China, arguing that he worked "in a sector in which the civil and military applications represent a risk for [French] national interests".

The note drew particular attention to the Northwestern Polytechnical University (IO, 29/09/23) in Xian, which specialises in armaments research and where the researcher studied for a time. It also referred to the work and publications he had realised with another Chinese researcher at a university which it said cooperated actively with the People's Liberation Army. It was referring here to the mechanics department at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (IO, 10/06/21) in Wuhan.

Restricted access laboratory

Alice Benveniste, the lawyer acting for the researcher and ENSAM, told the court that he risked losing his post as a lecturer at the top engineering school and pointed out that ENSAM's director and security and defence representative had agreed in February that he should be given access to the restricted part of the laboratory where he had been due to pursue his research work. She recalled, too, that he had previously held a different form of visa in France and that his application to renew that visa had been given a favourable response. 

A representative of the French interior ministry gave a less fulsome account of this approval, however, telling the magistrates that it had been "restrictive" and had prescribed that "all formal or individual collaboration" on the researcher's part with China and Chinese researchers should be "kept under surveillance". He expressed surprise, moreover, that the researcher had obtained access to this decision, which the ministry had disapproved. 

The administrative court finally rejected the researcher's application. In the decision it gave on 21 August, it said that none of the arguments he had presented had raised "any serious doubt regarding the legality" of the refusal of his visa application.

Alice Benveniste and ENSAM declined to respond to Intelligence Online's requests for further information.