Apart from his judges and the Chinese authorities, no one knows why 57-year-old Wu Xianle, who once worked in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is likely to spend the next decade in prison. "It's a state secret. We're not allowed to say any more," the public defender assigned to defend him told his family during a closed-door mock trial. In February 2022, Wu was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.

Given the purges and inter-clan score-settling that have characterized the reign of the highly autocratic President Xi Jinping, the fact that a party member has suddenly found himself plunged into the nightmare of China's prison system is, in itself, hardly surprising.

Wu was also a member of former President Hu Jintao's mandate (2003-2013) and was responsible for writing some of his speeches. His past roles could explain his current downfall, given that since becoming head of state in 2013, President Xi has not ceased to get rid of many of his predecessor's associates, collaborators and ministers. At the last Communist Party Congress on October 22, 2022, he even went so far as to have Hu himself escorted out, preventing him from attending the closing ceremony.

However, the reasons for Wu's ominous fate must undoubtedly be sought elsewhere: In 2014, not only did he marry in France – a rare occurrence for a member of the CCP – but Wu married a man, a French man, a possibly aggravating circumstance in the atmosphere of a return to moral order advocated by the current Chinese president.

Even though homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, and has no longer been considered a mental illness since 2001, same-sex marriage is not allowed in the Middle Kingdom – it is allowed almost nowhere in Asia, except in Taiwan and Nepal.

"We know that in China, when you rise, you always have to be prepared for the fall," said Wu's partner François Dupouy, in his small duplex in the attic of a building near the Place de la Bastille in Paris. This 77-year-old retired Saint-Gobain engineer knows China well: While he was still working, he carried out short sales missions in Beijing as a specialist in coating materials. Fascinated by China's history and culture, he went on to learn Mandarin. Meeting Wu in 2009 further piqued his interest in the country. He ended up spending half a year there.

Everything changed in the winter of 2021: Dupouy, who had left Beijing six months earlier because of Covid-19 and the expiry of his visa, learned of his husband's arrest. Wu's sidelining is a classic of the genre: On January 21 of that year, he disappeared while driving to work. A little later, his vehicle was driven back to the foot of the building where he lived with his 28-year-old daughter. She was ordered to leave the premises for 48 hours to allow state security agents to search the apartment. When she returned, her computers and papers were gone. "They even took my French literature books. I imagine they're translating Jean Giono into French right now," said Dupouy.

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