Policewomen patrolling on horseback have always been an attraction for visitors in Dalian, Liaoning province. Chen Hao / for China Daily

An autistic child pets a horse with the help of a policewoman at the Dalian police unit's base. Zeng Zhi / Xinhua

Public spending is valuable, but sometimes value cannot be measured in practicalities alone.

A debate about a Chinese city's mounted police unit may not have launched the sharpest inquiry into the use of public money, but it certainly started a positive cycle of citizen participation and government accountability.

What one person believes adds a sparkle to a cityscape, another may see as wasteful municipal spending.

The mounted police unit in Dalian, Liaoning province, was the subject of a recent controversy when a retired policeman from the northeastern Chinese city openly questioned its practicality. In a posting on the city government's website on May 26, Zhao Ming raised the issue of the cost of having policewomen riding beautiful stallions across the city, calling it an "image project", a Chinese euphemism roughly equivalent to a white elephant.

The unit was set up in 1994, purportedly combining the functions of "security patrol, city management, sports showmanship and ceremonial performance". You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that catching thieves or traffic violators, among other mundane policing tasks, are probably not high on the unit's priorities.

The sight of policewomen in colorful uniforms on horseback is simply too tempting for both locals and visitors to ignore. To borrow a Chinese cliche, it has been a "calling card" of Dalian.