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We use the international press to highlight the different perceptions of Chinese health diplomacy at the start of the pandemic. While many European media reported the “failure of mask diplomacy” in the summer of 2020, a look at the African and Chinese press challenges this view. Admittedly, the Chinese government took several months to invent its narrative, but it then managed to silence internal criticism. By portraying the effectiveness of its measures while repositioning itself as an expert authority, the government was able to denounce a lack of rigor in related foreign measures. In this paper, we focus on the contours of mask diplomacy. We postulate that mask diplomacy reflects the reconfiguration of alliances that has accompanied China’s ascendancy on the international stage. Thus, if China’s health diplomacy is currently inaudible to us in Europe, it is perhaps not because of its failure, but rather because it is no longer addressed to us.