On May 22, 2023, an unusual group prepared to climb the steps of the Cannes Film Festival. Four Chinese women, all smiling and dressed in extravagant evening gowns, posed before the screening of Club Zero. Jessica Hausner's film, which was in competition for the Palme d'Or, portrays a teacher who takes possession of the minds of her wealthy students through a delusional cult argument.

The red carpet photographers that evening certainly didn't measure the irony of the situation: These women were executives of Create Abundance, an esoteric movement with cult-like leanings virtually unknown in France, and which has been relieving its followers of colossal sums of money for several years. In China, many of the group's leaders have been accused of overseeing pyramid-selling activities worth over €100 million. Now, the movement is seeking to establish itself in France.

At the heart of this international movement is a Chinese woman, Dazhun Zhang, who since the early 2000s has been working hard to develop a philosophy in which spiritual well-being and material prosperity are intimately linked: to achieve happiness, you have to accumulate wealth. In practice, Zhang targets a clientele of wealthy women with psychological issues, fragile health, and family problems. The formula is proving popular in China, where fortunes are forged at breakneck speed. In just a few years, Zhang – who describes herself as "one of China's greatest masters of spiritual growth" – has developed a nationwide network of classes, where participants agree to pay large sums of money in exchange for psychological support and the promise of "opening up to their inner energy and magical creation."

Mentors, pyramids, and reinvention

According to a former disciple interviewed in 2018 as part of a criminal investigation in China, spiritual centers dedicated to Create Abundance operate according to a well-oiled pyramid scheme. New "student-partners" pay a sum of 50,000 yuan (€6,500) for a few courses. Each rung of the pyramid recovers a portion of this sum, right up to the top – Zhang and the nine "international mentors," who don't hesitate to show off their opulence. According to a letter signed by "Chinese victims of the Create Abundance scam," the courses will cost students, at the very least, "more than one billion yuan," or €130 million, between 2013 and 2018. Additional fees – up to several million yuan – are charged to followers who wish to advance to a higher, more remunerative position.

As Zhang's fortune grew bigger, families duped by Create Abundance's rhetoric found themselves heavily in debt. From 2015 onwards, they filed lawsuits against the organization's dozens of centers. The Chinese authorities, who have little sympathy for cults, condemned certain leaders, but Zhang and her mentors managed to so far escaped prosecution. Zhang, who, according to various documents consulted by Le Monde, holds at least two passports of convenience (one from Antigua and Barbuda, one from Dominica) in addition to her Chinese nationality, left China and set up a remote base with her family near Vancouver, in western Canada.

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