Skift Take
As London is tangled in bureaucratic wrangle over relaxing visa regulations for Chinese visitors, Paris is winning the race even as the incidences of violence against these tourists have been on the rise.
For one fleeting instant, an expression of intense exasperation flickered across the face of the immaculately groomed sales assistant in a chic Parisian department store as the Chinese tourists jostled and gestured at watches costing several thousand euros apiece.
Then she bit her lip and smiled. The Chinese visitors counting out wads of euros and engaged in what the Paris authorities call "fervent shopping" neither noticed nor seemed to care. They had cash, lots of it, burning holes in their pockets and, with visits to the Louvre and Versailles beckoning, not much time to spend it on the luxury goods and logos they were seeking.
The excited chatter was not so much about which monogrammed watch or leather handbag to buy, but how many.
As London frets over the bureaucratic obstacles placed in the way of high-spending visitors from Beijing or Shanghai, Paris is reaping the reward of an official drive to make the city the destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of increasingly affluent Chinese tourists.
"Let's be perfectly clear, this is a competition with London, t
