
Lily wu calls herself assistant to the secretary general of a center for chinese-european development studies. The linkedin profile picture shows an accurate young woman who is assiduously taking notes in pencil. They cite one of the country’s most prestigious universities as a reference. Laeticia chen identifies herself as a project manager for a chinese thinktank in the world’s largest career network with well over 400 million registered users. And jason wang introduces himself as the manager of an association that wants to improve relations with china.
All three profiles have at least two things in common: they are potentially interesting contacts for experts, politicians and scientists with a penchant for china, with allegedly more than 500 contacts. And all three are fake profiles. At least, that is what a project group of the federal office for the protection of the constitution (bfv) has found out. From january to the end of september, the group intensively studied one of the currently most important forms of chinese espionage: contact via social media.