Last summer, with Russia's gruelling war in Ukraine shifting the geopolitical sands in Europe, Beijing dispatched a veteran envoy to tour the bloc's eastern front. Beijing's cosy ties with Moscow had soured its image across the region, compounding a situation that had worsened over the Covid-19 pandemic, when the country's reputation across Europe took a battering. Huo Yuzhen, a former Chinese ambassador to the Czech Republic and Romania, visited eight countries in three weeks, one flank of a wi