The case has been making waves since 2024: The espionage trial against Jian G., a former employee of former AfD MEP Maximilian Krah, who now sits in the Bundestag for the AfD, began on Tuesday at the Dresden Higher Regional Court. Until his arrest in April 2024, Jian G. is alleged to have spied as an agent for the People's Republic of China.
According to the indictment, Jian G. obtained more than 500 documents, some of them "sensitive", relating to deliberations and decisions of the European Parliament and forwarded them to Chinese authorities. He is also alleged to have spied on Chinese opposition members and dissidents in Germany. His alleged accomplice Yaqi X. was also on trial. She is accused of passing on information to Jian G. about flights, freight and passengers at Leipzig Airport, including transport flights operated by the German Armed Forces and the armaments company Rheinmetall.
The affair sheds light on the AfD MP's relationship with China.In the past, Krah has attracted attention by congratulating the Communist Party on the seventieth anniversary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, where China brutally suppressed protests, or by describing reporting on re-education camps in Xinjiang as anti-Chinese propaganda.
Sinologist Lucas Brang from the University of Freiburg sees ideological similarities between German right-wing extremists such as Maximilian Krah and the thinkers of the Communist Party (CP).He published an article about this in October in theLeaflets for German and international politics.
The first point is human rights.Maximilian Krah sat on the Human Rights Committee both in the EU Parliament and today in the Bundestag. In 2022, he gave the Chinese news platformGuanchazheand was asked whether China and the West could come together on the issue of human rights. Krah replied that this was not at all desirable: "The Western theory of human rights has gone too far." Krah describes human rights as a neo-colonialist concept.
This also corresponds to the CP's stance on human rights.When the United Nations criticizes China's human rights violations in Tibet or Xinjiang, China rejects this: human rights are being used as a weapon to attack China, said Chen Xu, China's UN ambassador in Geneva last year, for example.
Another connection is thinking in so-called large spaces:According to this theory, peace prevails when one hegemonic power rules over a large area and no "non-spatial" power intervenes in another large area. This theory originates from the German jurist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt is described as the "crown jurist of the National Socialists"; theories such as that of the Greater Space were intended to legitimize the war waged by the National Socialists.
Carl Schmitt is one of the main reference points for right-wing extremists in Germany. In his 2020 book "Politics from the Right", Krah refers to Schmitt and his theory of the Greater Space. He describes universalism as a neo-colonial idea of Western "left-wing liberals". As an alternative, he presents the concept of Greater Spaces, "which organize themselves, regularly through ancestral regional powers, and in which non-spatial powers are not allowed to intervene."
What this means in concrete terms in relation to China can be seen in his stance on Taiwan:In an interview withFree West Media from 2020, Krah said he understood the Chinese people who "hope for and work towards reunification with Formosa". Formosa is the name given to Taiwan by Portuguese sailors. According to right-wing extremism researcher Felix Schilk, right-wing extremists often use this name to deny Taiwan's legitimacy.
Schmitt's theories have been so popular among Chinese thinkers since the 2000s that the sinologist Lucas Brang speaks of "Schmitt fever".The philosopher Liu Xiaofeng, who translated Schmitt's work into Chinese, wrote in 2020 with regard to the Greater China Theory that Schmitt's warnings were still valid for China: "We must recognize that the New China has not yet established an independent 'Greater China order with a ban on intervention by powers outside of China'."
Despite these similarities, Schilk warns against attributing too much consistency to Krah's stance on China: "A lot of it is opportunistic pandering, not hard ideology". Strategically, China fits into the world view of many right-wing extremists, which is about breaking through US hegemony. Schilk believes that China is a useful projection surface for this and that the right-wingers pick and choose what suits them best: "Who has any knowledge of the language or has studied China in detail? Nobody does that."
This does not prevent alliances from forming here. They are not formal networks, but loose connections: People know each other, they read each other, they meet. The example of Alexander Dugin, who is described as Putin's philosopher, clearly illustrates what this looks like. He celebrates Xi Jinping's New Silk Road as a Eurasian project, gives lectures in China and is part of a think tank at Fudan University in Shanghai. Dugin is also in contact with right-wing activists from Europe and the USA: he gave an interview to former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, as well as Brittany Sellner, the wife of Austrian activist Martin Sellner.
A deep knowledge of the other countries is not necessary for these connections, because what unites them is a common enemy:They are against globalization, against universalism, against "Wokeism", against US hegemony and often refer to Carl Schmitt. Krah summarizes their credo inGuanchazhe-Interview together: "You must never become like the 'left-wing liberals'!"Collaboration: Julia Fiedler
