A tourist from China had her purse, with $7,000 cash in it, snatched by a thief as she was taking a photograph of the Kamehameha statue in downtown Honolulu in midafternoon on Oct. 10.

Travel agent Eric Shi said the woman was a client of his who was carrying the cash because she was acting as accountant for a group of 10 travelers. He said she struggled to fight off the thief so hard so that he knocked her down before he jumped into a car and sped away.

But Shi wasn't surprised that the visitor kept her cool during the robbery because she was a civilian employee of the Chinese police. He said police tracked down the car that the thief fled in, but found it abandoned and that it had been stolen.

Shi is among about a half-dozen travel agents who belong to the Hawai'i chapter of the China Travel Association and who told The Advertiser they are worried about what they see as an upswing in thefts from their clients.

Shi and Jian Zhang, Jason Yang and Elly Fang figure that their clients are getting hit by thefts about twice a month. Although Chinese visitors have increased in large percentages in recent years, the total number still remains small — nearly 50,000 last year — compared to the vastly larger numbers of visitors from other markets: the Mainland U.S., Japan and Canada.

The agents said the Chinese visitors are becoming targets because they don't use charge cards and they often carry all the cash for all three days of a typical brief visit.

"They carry cash. They carry all the cash in their wallet or purse," Zhang said. He said after more than 25 years in the visitor business here, he believes there's been a rise in these crimes in the last two years.

With China and Korea on the brink of easing travel restrictions in coming years, Zhang said he's worried that crimes against tourists will discourage those visitors just as there is potential for welcoming many more international visitors to the islands.

Shi worries that some thieves may be targeting the visitors as easy prey, unlikely to testify at a trial. "They're tourists; once they're gone, they're gone forever," he said.

Agent Elly Fang said her agency saw three theft cases in the past two months, including a break-in at a van at Sandy Beach.

When five visitors had their belongings stolen last week, they had a problem in addition to the frustration, ruined vacation and disappointment. Because three of the tourists lost their passports in the theft, they had to fly to San Francisco to get the proper documents through the embassy there, she said.

"And then they had to apply for a temporary passport," she said, so they ended up extending their trip to another city and by another week just to replace their travel documents.

But agent Selene Wang said the groups aren't likely to stop carrying cash anytime soon. In China, she said, "to use credit card is very, very inconvenient."

Shi said they strive to balance words of warning without scaring people away from Hawai'i.

Honolulu Police Capt. Frank Fujii said he's not been aware of tourists from China being singled out as crime victims. But he said the best thing the agents can do is provide some tips to help prevent the crimes and then make sure the thefts are reported.

"Awareness is the key," Fujii said. "They're on vacation and they let their guard down."

Fujii said tips help. "They need to report the crimes. Otherwise, there could be a crime problem that we're not aware of," he said.

And giving the specific locations helps more: "We're always patrolling areas where the tourists are or any large gatherings of people."

He said police have interpreters available if there is a language barrier.

The travel agents suggested beefing up police at several scenic spots where they've had trouble with repeated van break-ins: Makapu'u, Sandy Beach and Waimanalo Beach Park.

"Those are the tourist must-see areas," Shi said.

Honolulu City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said he wasn't aware of a problem with Chinese tourists, but has seen similar problems with other groups. A department in his office called the Visitor Assistance Program has worked to bring back victims to testify to help curb that trend.

"We had similar situations with Japanese visitors that we all remember very well, particularly with drive-by purse snatchings and people targeting the Japanese because they carried more money and they were not likely to return," Carlisle said.

Once word gets out that prosecution can still go forward, Carlisle said, it helps to discourage crimes against tourists.

"Targeting these people suddenly doesn't have the type of appeal," he said.

Carlisle said the law allows the use of videoconferencing to get testimony from victims. He said first-time defendants often plead guilty once they find people willing to testify against them.

Carlisle recently returned from a trip to China and said he realizes the significance in the potential boom in visitors coming here. "It's not only good for tourism but I think it's good for the relationships between the two countries,"

Yuk Pang Law, who runs Hawaii Immigrant Services, which assists Chinese immigrants, worries that news of such crimes will travel. "The bad image of Hawai'i is going to travel to China," she said.

Jian Zhang said more police enforcement may help. He said the Arizona Memorial is a favorite tourist destination that manages to fight thefts.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.