PARIS - CHINESE opera singer Shi Pei Pu, who was convicted of espionage in France in 1986 along with his French diplomat-lover, died on Tuesday in Paris, an aide said on Wednesday.
Shi was 70 and had been living in Paris as a free man since 1987 when then-President Francois Mitterrand decided to grant him a pardon over the affair that inspired David Cronenberg's 1993 film 'M. Butterfly.'
A singer for the Beijing opera, Shi was sentenced to six years in jail in May 1986 by a Paris court on charges of spying for China.
Also convicted was Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat and Shi's lover who had passed on some 30 French secret documents to Bejing from 1977 to 1979 while working at the French embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
Shi had convinced Boursicot that he was a woman and even told him that a son was born from their affair.
The two men were arrested while they were living in Paris in 1983 and Boursicot claimed at the trial that he had been betrayed by his lover.
Born in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, Shi met Boursicot in 1964 and their relationship lasted more than 20 years.
