Prominent far-right lawmaker Maximilian Krah is expected to face some difficult questions in a Dresden court on Wednesday, when he is called as a witness in the trial of his former assistant Jian G.*, a suspected Chinese spy.
Krah was a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from 2019, before entering the German parliament this year, and was the party’s leading candidate in last year’s European election.
Jian G. was an accredited assistant to Krah throughout the politician’s term in the European Parliament, which gave him access to the parliament’s negotiations and procedures. While he was there, according to German federal prosecutors, he gathered hundreds of documents that he “reviewed for intelligence purposes, in order to pass on to the Chinese secret service.”
The prosecutors say that Jian, who they believe was working for Chinese intelligence since 2002, saved some 500 European Parliament documents, some classified as “sensitive,” on laptops or USB sticks, some of which he took to China. Jian’s accreditation would also have allowed him to move freely within the European Parliament and learn its inner workings.
Along with his co-defendant, a woman named in the indictment only as Xiao, Jian G. is also alleged to have gathered information about leading members of the AfD, the Chinese opposition community, and about the transport of German military equipment, troops, and fighter drones from Leipzig airport.
What German secrets did AfD ex-aide allegedly pass to China?
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Bribery accusations
Krah has said he felt “betrayed” by his former employee. “For more than 10 years we had a good, very trustful relationship,” he told DW’s Matthew Moore in early August. “So obviously, if the prosecutor’s office is right, my trust was misused. I’m the man who has the most interest in finding out what really happened.”
Krah also apparently considered the suspect a friend: “He was in a very intelligent way a little bit surreal and maybe I like people who are both intelligent and surreal, who are a little bit out-of-the-box,” he said. “I often ask myself whether I maybe have overlooked something or I should have taken more control, maybe.”
Though he is only appearing as a witness on Wednesday, Krah is himself under investigation by state prosecutors on accusations of bribery — as a lawyer, he once represented Jian G.’s import-export company, and received money from the suspect. Krah dismissed these payments, which he said amounted to no more than a few hundred euros, as the routine fees a lawyer receives from his client.
Jian G. is on trial for espionage in Dresden following his arrest last yearImage: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture alliance
What China wants
Mareike Ohlberg, China expert at the German Marshall Fund think tank, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said it was not unusual for Chinese intelligence agencies to try to recruit informants for money.
There have been cases in the past, she said, where the Chinese secret service has tried to influence European politicians to be more friendly to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“Generally speaking, that’s steering conversations and influencing a party or a politician in a certain direction, [which] is definitely part of the portfolio,” she told DW. “This can happen, whether that’s the case here is unclear.”
Ohlberg also thinks it makes sense for China to try to use MEPs’ access.
“If I were the Chinese state I would want to know what’s going on in the European Parliament, anything I should know about if I’m having discussions with the EU — interesting background knowledge,” she said. “You try to shape certain policies, narratives in China’s interest in the long run.”
In fact, Krah has been known to take up China-friendly positions in the past. Following a trip to China in 2019, where he visited a research center belonging to the controversial telecommunications giant Huawei, Krah defended the company on his Facebook page: “The demonization of #Huawei has geopolitical and economic reasons; security concerns are merely a pretext,” he wrote.
According to a report in Der Spiegel magazine from 2023, Krah also tried to persuade the AfD’s Bundestag members to review their hardline position on China.
Infiltrating Chinese diaspora and dissident communities
Jian G.’s work appears to have been varied. Prosecutors also said that Jian G. joined several dissident Telegram channels, where he posed as a regime critic to make contact with real dissidents. The CCP is known to take an interest in opposition figures living in Europe, and it is thought to be common for intelligence agencies to try to infiltrate their communities.
Ohlberg said that, unlike Russia, which is known to aggressively pursue and even assassinate opposition figures living in Europe, China adopts a more circumspect strategy.
“In Europe, for sure, it’s not assassinating people, but they might use some of the information to try to pressure relatives,” the sinologist said. There have been cases in the past, she added, where the CCP was able to force dissidents into becoming informants for the Chinese state by using information against them.
In general, Ohlberg said, China does not employ election interference and disinformation tactics to the same extent as Russia.
“The stereotype that people will give you, and it’s true to a point: Russia is more destructive and after short-term gain, whereas China tends to try to network more broadly, tries to make connections in any political party that is relevant — and that’s different from having spies embedded in somebody’s office.”
That stereotype is not “100% true,” she added, “but by and large these are more the operation patterns.”
Jian G’s arrest
But those days appear to be behind Jian G. He was arrested in Dresden in April 2024, causing a scandal a few weeks before the European election. Krah’s offices were also searched.
“If the allegations are confirmed, it strikes at the heart of our democracy,” commented Germany’s then-Justice Minister Marco Buschmann. “We cannot tolerate this; if the allegations are confirmed, there must be serious consequences.”
But Krah played down the affair, suggesting that since counterintelligence agencies had apparently had Jian under surveillance for several years before arresting him, he could not have been considered a major threat.
“They supervised him for four years,” Krah said. “They could warn me. Okay, they say, ‘we don’t trust Mr. Jian.’ Fair enough. They took four years to take him out of business.”
* The suspect’s name is withheld to comply with the German press code.
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