Dalrymple reports from France that Chinese police are being employed in Paris to assist Chinese tourists. Not surprisingly, this has raised concerns:

This argument does not convince Marie Holzman, president of an organization called China Solidarity. She thinks that the Chinese police are more likely to regard tourists as potential violators of Chinese law than as victims of French crime, and therefore to spy on them. What is legal in France—to belong to the Falun Gong sect, for example—is often illegal in China. And since there are 800,000 Chinese residents in France, Holzman asks, why not use some of them to assist the French police? True, they would have to be paid, whereas the Chinese police are paid for (airfares included) by Beijing. But despite its economic difficulties, France is not yet in a position to need Chinese foreign aid.