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Weidel admitted meeting Wu but said she met him once in months. As for their discussions, Weidel said that she sought an understanding of China’s position on Germany.
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The damning findings come days ahead of German parliamentary elections in which AfD has rattled mainstream politicians. As per latest opinion polls, the party stands second in popularity and way ahead of incumbent SPD. While AfD’s links to the neo-Nazi movement have led to widespread concerns and contributed to its ostracisation by German parties, the links to China have led to fresh concerns whether a top contender for German chancellorship has been groomed by China.
The findings are all the more damning as European far-right has long been supported by Russia and China is Russia’s principal ally. The AfD is so extremist that even French far-right party, National Rally (RN), broke ties with it in the European Union (EU) elections last year. Moreover, AfD has previously been charged with spying for China and such allegations contributed to the RN-AfD split.
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AfD leader Alice Weidel’s long relationship to China
In light of revealation of Weidel’s secret meetings with the top Chinese diplomat in Germany, fresh attention has come on her long relationship with China that goes back to decades. It is bound to be explored whether she has been groomed by China to do the Communist Party’s bidding in Germany and Europe.
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As an economist, Weidel worked for the state-owned Bank of China and lived in China for six years. It has been reported that she was on scholarship during those years. Her doctoral thesis was also written on Chinese pension system.
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In China, Weidel worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
While Weidel today leads a party linked to neo-Nazis, her grandparents were members of the Nazi Party. Her grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a prominent Nazi judge who persecuted political opponents of the Nazi regime. He was appointed by Adolf Hitler himself.
Update: @joelthelion@lemmy.world removed their comment. Too bad I didn’t qoute it. But to paraphrase it from my recollection it went: “what’s with this firstpost.com site? I’ve never heard of it before, is it trustworthy? I can’t find mentions of this story elsewhere”. To which I replied the following:
Same to both points. I don’t like how AfD, by all accounts a right wing neo fascist party, looks to be gaining mandates, but I don’t think that this specific attack on this specific person is reasonable.
I mean Weidel did spend years in China and speaks Mandarin. If she met with the Chinese ambassador on a regular basis, there could be a million reasons, and being a Chinese spy or getting resources from China for her party, are only two of them.
There are a lot of other reasons why Weidel and her party shouldn’t be in power, but as of now this specific reason isn’t one of them in my view.
So this is not proof of anything on the part of Weidel, but: Maximilian Krah, the Afd MEP, was found to be furthering Chinese interests as well. Including having a Chinese-German employee who was thought to be a Chinese spy. The employee is gone now and Krah has reemerged and will be presumably be voted into Bundestag today.
Hi, your quote is fairly accurate.
I deleted my comment because I later found a few references to this Chinese stuff and didn’t feel like arguing about it. But basically, I agree with you. This stuff may or may not be innocuous, we can’t really know. But there are a zillion better other reasons to oppose AfD.