Central and eastern Europe turn to Taiwan as China r...

A study of European views on China published last year by Palacký University Olomouc and the Central European Institute of Asian Studies think-tank found that Serbia and Latvia were the only central and eastern European countries with predominantly positive views.

In the Czech Republic, the country where sentiment was most hostile, 56 per cent of respondents had negative attitudes towards Beijing and 41 per cent said their views had worsened in the past three years.

For the same reason, the region is watching China’s increasingly close ties to Russia with alarm. The two countries’ 2017 joint naval exercise in the Baltic Sea came “as a shock to Poland”, said Szczudlik.