Female bodyguards are increasingly sought after in China, according to the BBC:
Among China’s burgeoning wealthy elite, women make up a third of the country’s millionaires.
With resentment building over the widening gap between rich and poor, many of these women are now seeking personal protection.
Successful entrepreneur Wen Cui founded Guodun, a personal security business, to cater to this market.
She branched out from the more sedate world of running a chain of kindergartens ….
She says that female clients prefer women to their often burly male counterparts as they draw less attention – and scandal.
Asahi Shimbun, meanwhile, reports that a “wide network of female spies” operates on China’s behalf, sometimes under heavy coercion:
In November 2010, another high-ranking official approached Shao and pressed her to obtain internal information from a military attache posted at a European embassy in Beijing. She was involved in a relationship with the attache.
She again refused, and surveillance over her intensified, she said.
Shao also said she was threatened: “You will be run over by a car ….”
“I cannot forgive the military, which should be protecting the people, for abusing its power to pressure an individual citizen,” Shao said.
Taiwanese general Lo-Hsein Che was given a life sentence earlier this year after apparently falling prey to a Chinese honey trap, while Wikileaks cables revealed that a number of Chinese officials had been caught in return. More recently, Canadian MP Bob Dechert drew fire for flirtatious email exchanges with a Xinhua reporter whom many reports suggested was acting as a spy.
