chinese chars from db rendered as "question marks" (1 reply)

Problem: Chinese characters from DB are not properly rendered in report
Description: Chinese characters from DB are not properly rendered in the report, and appear as "????"question marks. Attached a screenshot of the problem
My database (MyISAM) encoding is utf8_general_ci
and the information are correctly stored inside (e.g. I can correct view these chinese chars in the db using phpmyadmin)
How can I solve this issue?

Thank you in advance for any support.
Francesco