Fine brandy, a Tour de France jersey and old grudges against NATO: On his first European tour in five years, Chinese President Xi Jinping is engaging in a diplomatic dance that is seen by some as a concerted Chinese bid to stress-test the transatlantic alliance.

With Washington watching warily from the sidelines, Xi's whirlwind visit this week has taken him to France, Serbia and Hungary, with a very different tone and agenda at each stop, but with some overarching goals in common.

Taken as a whole, the Chinese leader's European trip is seen as both a charm offensive and a hard-nosed display of realpolitik on matters such as trade and the war in Ukraine — at the expense of a united Western front on both.

During the visit, Xi has nodded to traditional European centers of power such as France and the European Union — but also laid heavy emphasis on deepening ties with autocratic allies on the continent's fringe.

In the peaks of the cloud-shrouded Pyrenees, Xi accepted a jersey from France's famed bicycle race and joined President Emmanuel Macron in calling for a truce in all global hostilities during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

In Serbia's capital, Xi's arrival coincided with the 25th anniversary of NATO's mistargeted bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade — an episode that still stirs anti-Western fury among Serbian nationalists.

And in Hungary, he offered warm praise for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the illiberal leader who has been a thorn in the side of European allies in the more than two years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Some analysts saw Xi's trip as one meant to drive home the message that China will seek to counter U.S. influence wherever it can, and pointedly remind even close American allies to consider whether their own interests run counter to those of Washington.

"There's lot of press commentary that the Chinese are engaged in a 'charm offensive,'" Evan Medeiros, the former China director at the National Security Council, said in a video interview with Foreign Policy magazine.

While that may be so, he said, the three stops on the tour were specifically chosen in service of "advancing Chinese interests in ways meant to undermine the priorities of both the European Union and NATO."

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