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.

It was, instead, another in a series of bumbling missteps by China that have left it foundering diplomatically in the Czech Republic. Humiliated by the statement, Mr Babis publicly contradicted Mr Zhang, saying flatly, “I do not know what the ambassador is talking about.” The limited Huawei ban, imposed by Mr Babis and some government ministries, stayed in place. A years-long effort to influence the political and business elite of the Czech Republic, and to turn the foreign policy of an EU member country, was unravelling.