first off you want to do your research and find a reliable trust worthy manufacturing company in china. make an agreement to help bring them into the european market. (i'm assuming you already researched the laws and regulations ) next you identify which distributors you can target in europe. since everyone knows about chinese business practices you must be willing and prepared to come out of your own pocket to guarantee delivery and quality of product! once you have established a good reputation with one or 2 distributors then you can branch out to more and locate different manufacturers making different products (make sure you diversify and deal with different kinds of products) so you can seamlessly ride the waves of the economic ups and downs.

Andy, it's been done over and over again, you'd be kicking a dead horse. Represent what in China, there are no real Chinese name brands that haven't literally been copied to a tee of another real name brand. And you know the Western laws, heavy fines and prison time for these types of copyright infringements. Along with the really good advise that crimo above has stated and absolutely true, I'll give you a bit more, if you have an idea, keep it out of China, go to India, Chinese businessmen can and will take everything you have and laugh it all the way to the bank. Steal ideas and so on, patent who cares about a silly patent. That being said, my sister in law owns a really large manufacturing plant in Tangshan, she rents it now for someone as mentioned above went around her patent and took the business right out from under her and guess what, sold it to Europe. But if you really want to try go for it but keep your money where you can see it my friend, you're more than welcome to drop me a line and see if this plant can aid you on your quest.

Learn Chinese.