Ludovic Chaker

Ludovic Chaker is a French martial artist and politician. Chaker grew up in the southern French town of Saint-Jean-du-Bruel, in the Aveyron department.

Chaker practices traditional Chinese kung-fu, and was a student of Master Liang Chaoqun, representative of the "natural style" (ziran men) in France. He presided at the Wan Laisheng association in France for three years. He learned to speak Chinese and has contributed to several academic books on modern China, such as Shanghai: Histoire, promenade, anthologie & Dictionnaire, edited by Nicolas Idier.

He studied public administration at Sciences Po Paris, France's leading university for education in political and diplomatic studies. He worked at the French consulate in Shanghai, where he was in charge of the development of French-Chinese academic cooperation. Chaker worked as chief of staff for French local government, and then was appointed director of the center for Asia and the Pacific at Sciences Po Paris.

Chaker was an independent, social-democratic candidate for the 2012 French election in the newly created Eleventh Constituency for French residents overseas in the Asia-Pacific region. He is known for leading a "2.0 campaign", getting accommodations thanks to the CouchSurfing social network and making extensive use of web tools, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. He finished ninth after receiving less than 2% of the votes in the first round.

Key points in his program were support for bi-national families, support for French entrepreneurs developing or expanding businesses in the Asia-Pacific region, the improvement of healthcare delivery for overseas residents, and the promotion of contributions made by French people overseas to the interests of the country.