At nearly every press briefing by the Foreign Ministry lately, foreign journalists are told: Tibet is China’s internal matter. It is not an international issue.

That is wrong, and here is my evidence.

On Monday, the Paris City Council bestowed honorary citizenship on the Dalai Lama, a rare act only done a handful of times before and a stick in the eye to China. Click here and here and here for more.

President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed the move. He is rightfully worried that anti-French protests in China could get out of hand and hurt French interests.

Yet leading the charge is Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist who is a likely contender for the presidency in 2012. Delanoe called the Dalai Lama “a champion of peace.” He said Paris wanted “to show its support for the people of Tibet who are defending their most basic right to dignity, freedom and simply life.”

Delanoe is no fool. The Dalai Lama is very popular in France. So at the expense of France’s relations with China, he thinks this will help build his popularity. Perhaps this is brinksmanship. After all, French companies like the huge retailer Carrefour are getting hurt by calls for a boycott among Chinese consumers angry that gendarmes didn’t protect the flame better during the Olympic torch relay in Paris April 7. Protesters besieged the relay, and the flame had to be relit at least four times.

The Dalai Lama, by the way, will be in France in August, the same month as the Beijing Summer Games.

So let me ask: If the Tibet issue is merely an internal affair, why is it having an impact on the politics of France? Maybe what China means to say is that it’s a French internal matter.