China tries, and fails, to influence the Czechs

ON THE NIGHT before Christmas Eve last year Zhang Jianmin, China’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, paid a visit to Andrej Babis, the prime minister, on the outskirts of the capital. The two men posed for a photograph by a Christmas tree, but it was not a social call. Mr Zhang objected to a security warning about Huawei and ZTE that had been issued by the country’s cyber-security agency, and complained that Mr Babis had banned his staff from using products made by the two Chinese telecoms giants. Mr Zhang emerged claiming, in a statement posted on Facebook, that Mr Babis had assured him that the security warning had been “misleading” and the ban hastily decided. It seemed briefly like a Chinese diplomatic victory in Europe.