Beijing Watch | Chinese Ex-Soldier Who Spoke Out Against Russia's War Now Faces Deportation

A former Chinese soldier who fought with Russian forces in Ukraine and publicly criticised the war now faces deportation back to China after Germany rejected his asylum application, in a case that has exposed the limits of European refugee law when confronted with Chinese state repression.

Xu Ziaoren(徐曉仁), 30, who uses the alias "Macaron," was detained by Russian forces shortly after giving an interview in March 2025 to Chai Jing (柴靜), a prominent independent Chinese journalist. He spent more than a year as a fugitive inside Russia. Relatives and friends in China were reportedly harassed, warned, and in some cases detained.

Xu crossed out of Russia earlier this year and reached Germany to seek asylum. Germany's Federal Office forMigration and Refugees (BAMF)rejected his application as "manifestly unfounded," ruling that the risk of persecution upon his return to China did not meet the legal threshold. An eight-page witness statement submitted by Chai Jing was dismissed as "rumour and unsubstantiated assertion."

Xu served as a radio technician in the Chinese military from 2013 to 2018 — one of the few publicly documented cases of a People's Liberation Army veteran joining an active overseas conflict.

He has said he was drawn into the war by Chinese nationalist films such as *Bright Sword* and *Wolf Warrior*, which led him to romanticise combat. What he encountered was different. "Every inch of ground was taken with blood," he said. "No humanity. No morality." He has since urged other Chinese citizens not to follow the same path.

His personal background remains difficult to independently verify, given the opacity of Chinese military records. But legal analysts say his conduct could attract charges ranging from illegal border crossing and defection to espionage under Chinese national security law — even though he joined the Russian military, which Beijing regards as a strategic partner.

His subsequent public criticism of the war and willingness to speak on Western platforms could be construed as damaging to national interests. In Chinese legal practice, the charge of "impure purpose in travelling abroad" has frequently served as a catch-all provision, applicable even where departure was formally lawful.

Since the conflict began, Chinese authorities have steadily tightened control over war-related content on domestic social media. Content creators on the video platform Bilibili who covered the fighting have received warnings from China's Cyberspace Administration; in some cases, family members inside China received visits from political security officers. Beijing has never officially acknowledged encouraging citizens to fight abroad and has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in such cases.

Chai Jing is best known internationally from her years at CCTV, where she rose to prominence through her close-range coverage of the 2003 SARS outbreak. Her 2015 documentary *Under the Dome*, an investigation into China's air pollution crisis, was removed from Chinese platforms within days of release but accumulated more than 300 million views before being taken down. She left CCTV in 2014 and now works as an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker abroad, with programmes that National Public Radio (NPR) has described as among the most popular Chinese-language news formats outside China.

The March 2025 interview with Xu drew 3.4 million views and triggered international media coverage, including in Germany. In February 2026, Xu informed Chai Jing he was going to risk fleeing Russia. She learned in April that he had been taken into German custody and had filed for asylum.

In a public statementposted on X on May 13 — responding to multiple interview requests from German-language media following the ruling — Chai Jing said she had chosen to keep her documentation of Xu's situation unpublished as a protective measure, based on professional judgment. She submitted a formal witness statement to BAMF on April 28, at Xu's request, containing video footage, audio recordings, correspondence, and more than 100,000 characters of investigative notes drawn from multiple contemporaneous interviews. She included her personal identification and contact details for verification.

The BAMF ruling came seven days later, on May 5. Chai Jing said she received no acknowledgement and no indication the materials had been reviewed before the decision was issued. She also noted that the rejection letter cited her statement as contradicting Xu's testimony at his hearing — a characterisation she disputes, saying her materials were drawn from multiple sources and witnesses whose accounts form a coherent and corroborated record. She added that the ruling contained factual errors about her personal details. Multiple witnesses she identified as available to cooperate have not been contacted.
She described the submission as the first time in thirty years as a journalist she had prepared such a protective record on behalf of a subject — a step she said the gravity of his situation required.

BAMF said all applications undergo strict individual review, requiring specific and credible evidence of persecution assessed against multiple intelligence sources. For Chinese nationals, the agency typically requires proof of serious and targeted political persecution, not generalised social or economic disadvantage. Most Han Chinese applicants are rejected for failing to clear that bar. Ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans, benefit from higher approval rates given international recognition of systematic state persecution.

Cases involving what authorities might characterise as voluntary misconduct followed by a change of heart — such as joining a foreign military and then publicly denouncing it — face considerably more rigorous scrutiny. Xu's application combined several characteristics that place it in a high-sensitivity category: prior participation in Russian military operations, Chinese citizenship, and potential political dissidence.

There is a structural mismatch at the core of Xu's case. Germany's forthcoming asylum law requires applicants to present all evidence at their initial hearing. But much of the coercion that Chinese authorities apply leaves no formal documentary trace. Informal warnings, security interrogations, and the intimidation of family members are precisely the forms of pressure that tend to fall below Germany's threshold for "sufficiently credible" evidence.

A Chinese community member in Italy, referred to as Mr Qin, described a related pattern: a Chinese civil servant he knew had left Beijing on ostensible sick leave, lived in Italy for more than a decade drawing his government salary, and was now awaiting naturalisation — apparently tolerated by authorities on both sides. European immigration systems, Mr Qin said, remain poorly equipped to scrutinise the actual circumstances of Chinese arrivals, making it harder for those who genuinely need protection to obtain legal status.

Pan Wenyang (潘文揚), a Taiwanese former soldier who served with Ukrainian forces and was also interviewed by Chai Jing, has publicly backed Xu. Pan said the two met through their shared frontline experience and that he travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina to see Xu off when he escaped Russia. He described Xu as "the only former Chinese soldier in the Russian military to have voluntarily identified himself and criticised the war from the front," and said the two had made a private commitment to work toward cross-strait peace. He said he was astonished that German authorities had rejected the application without contacting any witnesses.

Xu's case has drawn attention to a widening gap between Europe's stated commitment to human rights and the bureaucratic realities of refugee adjudication. An emergency court injunction has temporarily halted his deportation, but his status remains unresolved. As Germany tightens its asylum framework and prioritises applicants from recognised conflict zones, the outcome for "Macaron" illustrates a harder truth: speaking out publicly may attract attention, but it does not automatically translate into legal protection.