China's ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, whose remarks about Ukraine and other former Soviet states caused uproar across Europe last year, is wrapping up his tenure in Paris.

Lu, 60, one of the country's most prominent Wolf Warrior diplomats who is famed for his abrasive style, is expected to return to Beijing next month, according to French media.

At a farewell reception at Beijing's embassy in Paris on Monday, Lu said he would continue to support the Chinese community in France "no matter where I am in the future".

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"Economic and trade relations have always been the ballast of China-France relations. Cultural exchanges are the driving force. And Chinese people in France are a bridge that connects our hearts," he said in comments that appeared in videos on social media.

In a video interview with the official China News Service on Sunday, Lu said he had seen China-France relations evolve over the past five years while he was ambassador, as the "friendly atmosphere" became marked by "more intricate issues" in the fields of politics, the economy and trade.

Lu said he hoped the French side and the Europeans would not resort to wishful thinking or self-centredness but be pragmatic in solving problems.

He also said "France or the West" had been "at the top of the pyramid" for the past few hundred years, accustomed to looking down on others, including China.

China and the European Union are currently locking horns over trade, with Brussels imposing high tariffs on China-produced electric vehicles and Beijing imposing provisional anti-dumping duties ranging from 30.6 per cent to 39 per cent on liquor, mainly cognac shipments from France.

Lu's public remarks before leaving the post in Paris were softer than some of his earlier statements.

French TV channel LCI shows China's top envoy to France Lu Shaye, right.

In April last year, Lu's response to a French television interview on whether he considered Crimea part of Ukraine under international law caused a diplomatic uproar. The peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Lu said: "Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there's no international accord to concretise their status as a sovereign country."

Lu's comments drew widespread anger and criticism from Ukraine, France, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the EU and others. Dozens of European Parliament legislators even called on Emmanuel Macron's government to declare Lu persona non grata.

Beijing scrambled to distance itself from his remarks and limit the damage and there was widespread speculation about Lu's tenure in the wake of the faux pas, yet he stayed the full term as ambassador.

The saga, according to diplomatic watchers, dealt a blow to Beijing's charm offensives aimed at pulling Europe away from the United States, and increased scrutiny of its move to mediate peace in Ukraine.

Despite growing calls for Beijing to keep its Wolf Warrior diplomats under tighter control following the controversy, there was little sign Beijing wanted to change its increasingly assertive foreign policy.

In a subsequent interview, Lu vigorously defended his comment, saying it was "not contradictory to China's official foreign policy" and describing those who criticised him as "unkind" and "very unfair".

Claiming the controversy was about "freedom of speech in public debate", he told Regis de Castelnau, a lawyer who runs the blog page Vu du Droit that "some people are making a big fuss out of nothing", according to a transcript of the interview on the embassy's website.

Although Lu insisted he was expressing his personal opinions, many observers believed his controversial views might be based on internal talking points not authorised to be made public.

Famed for his escalatory, uncompromising style, Lu's rise in China's diplomatic corps coincided with China's nationalist shift in diplomacy and President Xi Jinping's repeated calls for greater fighting spirit to counter US-led containment.

According to his official resume, Lu joined the foreign ministry in 1987 after graduating from the ministry-affiliated China Foreign Affairs University.

After spending most of his early career working on African affairs, particularly related to French-speaking African countries, he became China's ambassador to Senegal in 2005 and then head of the ministry's Africa department in 2009.

He served briefly as deputy mayor of Wuhan and then as head of policy research at the Central Leading Group on Foreign Affairs between 2015 and 2016, a policy adviser role to the top leadership, before his appointment as China's ambassador to Canada in 2017.

His career took off during his two-year stint in Canada, especially after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in late 2017 and China's subsequent detention of two Canadians in 2018, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

In article published in January 2019, Lu repeatedly attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government over its close ties with the US and accused Canada and its Western allies of "Western egotism and white supremacy" for calling for the release of "the two Michaels".

While the commentary stirred angry protests in Ottawa, China's foreign ministry commended his article, which spokesman Lu Kang said "may have hit a sore spot with some Canadians".

Lu's term in Paris, which began in July 2019, was marked by one controversy after another, often landing him at the centre of diplomatic storms.

He was summoned to France's foreign ministry several times, including over the comment about ex-Soviet states and an article in April 2020 suggesting Paris was abandoning old people in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He earned notoriety for calling a respected China scholar at a French think tank who was critical of Beijing's alleged disinformation a "little rascal" and "rabid dog" in 2021 and claimed in 2022 that re-education would be required for the Taiwanese population after reunification.

He often described himself as a proud Wolf Warrior - a name derived from a series of nationalistic action films.

In an interview in June 2021 with French newspaper L'Opinion, he said those critical of China's Wolf Warrior diplomacy were "cowards".

He insisted China had never been an aggressor and asked: "Don't we have the right to fight back and defend ourselves? This is not fair!"

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