Unlike pop stars and blue-eyed film idols, EU commissioners are rarely teenage crush material.

Yet Stéphane Séjourné, who leads the bloc’s industry portfolio in Brussels, has become the fixation of a growing online community, with fandom especially strong in the Chinese-speaking world.

Also in the limelight is Gabriel Attal – France’s former prime minister, Macron’s Renaissance heavyweight, and presidential contender in the 2027 elections.

The pair, dubbed “Attalourné”, has become a subject of online fascination in China, as the recent news that their relationship has been rekindled triggered a flurry of fan fiction and video edits on social media – and even real-life pilgrimages by Chinese students to French political events.

“It runs the risk of becoming something that might threaten the Chinese government,” said Aja Romano, culture writer and editor at Fansplaining, a platform that analyses these online trends. The response of the Chinese government will be telling, Romano says: “I can assure you they’re paying close attention to the fandom and observing how it continues to evolve.”

Unintended soft power

Attal’s entourage says the phenomenon came as a surprise.

“We discovered it at a book signing in Paris – we had no idea about this visibility within Chinese communities,” a spokesperson said. “We look at it with curiosity and surprise, but it’s not something we sought or encouraged. We’re careful not to feed into it.”

The attention has followed Attal across events in France, with Chinese students showing up and sometimes asking about French politics. “They’re engaged,” the spokesperson noted, which might go some way in explaining the extra attention to the couple.

Séjourné’s team declined to comment. He is also known for keeping his private life tightly under wraps.

On Archive of Our Own – one of the world’s largest repositories of fan fiction – the number of stories about the pair has steadily increased in recent years, with nearly 400 stories since 2020. These were initially in French and English; the first in Chinese appeared in 2024 and these have now surpassed threads in other languages, both in terms of number and popularity.

The discussion isn’t all rose-tinted adulation. Some delve into EU politics, with surprisingly accurate descriptions of the EU’s reindustrialisation plans put forward by Séjourné. At times, French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is brought up, as well as other EU figures such as MEP Valérie Hayer.

On Chinese social media platforms like RedNote and Weibo, thousands of users comment on the pair’s reunion, sharing pictures and leaving mostly positive comments. On TikTok, more than 20,000 Attal-related posts feature pictures of him and Séjourné set to romantic songs by Lana Del Rey.

What might at first glance seem like a strange internet craze is partly explained by Chinese digital culture as ‘CP’ (coupling) culture, in which real-life figures are reimagined in fictional or semi-fictional relationships.

“Foreign politicians occupy a unique sweet spot,” said Lian Ge, who teaches digital sociology at University College London. “They are public, photogenic and easy to turn into narratives – rivals, allies or generational successors. They are also less politically risky to write about than domestic figures, where imaginative portrayals can quickly face backlash or censorship.”

Ge says that Séjourné and Attal fit a “familiar template: two telegenic men with a documented personal and political history.” Fan writers see this as “raw material for romance, melodrama or political allegory.”

The same logic has led to other unlikely fictional couples, such as Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, Ge added.

China’s queer fanbase paradox

China has, in recent years, tightened restrictions on LGBTQ-related expression and intensified crackdowns on “danmei”, a hugely popular genre of male-male romance fiction largely written and consumed by women.

Authorities have prosecuted writers, censored online platforms and pressured fan communities, framing parts of the culture as morally unhealthy or politically destabilising.

The Séjourné-Attal storyline, in that sense, has slipped beyond institutional narratives not only in the EU but also in China, evolving into something far less predictable and far harder to manage.

For European observers, it does not fit the usual idea of influence. And yet it brings EU figures into the awareness of a young, digitally active audience in China – one that might otherwise have little engagement with Brussels policymaking and French politics.

But the viral alternative reality of Attal and Séjourné’s relationship raises questions for their respective teams. Creative fandom can quickly turn into misrepresentation; in its most extreme forms it can become explicit, non-consensual content.

The fear is that the storyline could become more dominant, turning a public figure into a romantic character detached from the policy, politics or reality they try to advance.

(ow)