Police in France, still struggling to protect tourists from pickpockets, are to draft in Chinese police to help.
The Chinese officers will be posted to key landmarks to prevent Chinese visitors – around 1 million visiting France every year – being targeted by pickpockets and muggers.
The French Interior Ministry proposed that Chinese officers patrol along with French ones to better regulate tourist hot spots in Paris. It said the Chinese would play a preventative role.
Tourists from China are known to often carry large amounts of cash. They spent an estimated average of €1,300 during their stay, much of that devoted to designer goods.
In March last year a group of 23 Chinese visitors were robbed in a restaurant shortly after arriving in Paris. The group was on a 12-day tour of Europe but stopped for dinner at Le Bourget in one of Paris's northern suburbs, where €7,500 cash, plane tickets and passports were taken from them. The group leader was injured in the attack.
The tourism minister vowed to provide better security for visitors.
Tang Lu, of the Chinese Tourist Agency in Paris, said: "For us, Paris has replaced Rome in the table of cities where you have to pay the most attention. We are hearing about this kind of attack on Chinese visitors more and more often."
Organised gangs of thieves from eastern Europe use young children to harass tourists with diversionary tactics in order to put them off-guard when their pockets are picked.
