That prompted a reporter to ask: Are foreigners facing a new normal of a different kind, in light of the recent string of disappearances, expulsions and detentions of citizens of European Union countries who have defended freedom of speech and human rights in China?

Image Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights worker in Beijing. He was detained by the Chinese authorities this month. Credit... Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Clearly, I cannot but once again say that we are deeply concerned about all those issues,” Mr. Schweisgut said. “We do hope it’s not representing the new normal yet. But we do see an extremely worrying trend, and that’s why all these cases are taken extremely seriously.”

In the latest case, Peter Dahlin, 35, a Swedish co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group — a nongovernmental organization that trained and provided help to some of the rights lawyers who have been targeted by the government in a crackdown since July — was detained by the authorities early this month.

Mr. Dahlin is being held at an undisclosed residential location in Beijing on suspicion of endangering state security and other charges, according to people familiar with his situation who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In December, Ursula Gauthier, a French journalist, was expelled from China for writing in the newsmagazine L’Obs that the terrorist attacks in Paris in November were not similar to violent and bloody episodes in Xinjiang, a region in western China where Uighurs, an ethnic Turkic group, make up about 40 percent of the population. She wrote the article after several Chinese officials had drawn parallels between the two.