At least 13,000 people attended a rally, after a Chinese textile designer died after being mugged last month.
Demonstrators waving French flags and sporting T-shirts printed with the slogans "Stop violence, muggings, insecurity" or "Equality for all, security for all" marched from the Place de Republique square to the Bastille in eastern Paris, asking for more police protection.
Chaoling Zhang, a 49-year-old textile designer, died last month after five days in a coma after being attacked in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers by three men who stole his bag.
"At first it was just stealing bags, then it was stealing bags with violence, and now it’s stealing bags and killing. It could happen to anyone," 31-year-old Wang Yunzhou told Reuters TV.
"The people here are angry. We can’t feel relaxed in the street, and if we don’t even get a basic welcome in the police station people start to wonder," he said, adding that he moved to France from Wenzhou in south east China twenty years ago.
