China has cut off all cooperation with France on police affairs after Paris gave asylum to the Chinese wife of a former Interpol chief now in jail on corruption charges, according to French newspaper Le Monde, reports The Guardian.
Chinese authorities told a diplomat in Beijing in late July that a decision had been made to halt all cooperation after Grace Meng was awarded political asylum in May, the newspaper reported.
Increasingly assertive internationally, Beijing has made the decision to suspend a key aspect of the diplomatic and security relationship with Paris at a time when it is already in the global spotlight over protests in Hong Kong and an escalating trade dispute with the US.
Meng first hit headlines last year, when she decided to go public about her husband’s sudden disappearance during a trip home to China in September.
Interpol had not been given any information about the whereabouts of Meng Hongwei, who had been elected president of the body in 2016, leading to the bizarre spectacle of the global police body pleading with China for information about its chief.
In October, under international pressure, China finally admitted that Hongwei had been detained. He was not seen in public again until June, when he appeared in court in the north-eastern port city of Tianjin, confessed to accepting more than $2m in bribes and expressed regret for his crime, a court statement said.