Hungarian Prime Minister Orban likes to call himself a “former anti-communist street fighter” and often emphasizes his fight to overthrow the dictatorship and to free Hungary. It is true that he used to take to the streets of Budapest as a student to demonstrate against police who wanted to arrest government critics before Hungary’s transition. That was less than 30 years ago. Today Orbán despises liberal democracy and maintains friendly relations with dictators. He has befriended Putin and is close to Erdogan, the longtime Turkish leader’s guest of honor.
Moreover, Orbán has deepened his strategic partnership with the Communist Party of China over the past decade, and the two sides are closer than any other EU member state. Hungary has become an important gateway to Europe for the Chinese Communist Party.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Hungarian political scientist Péter Krekó said: “Although almost all EU countries have good economic relations with the CCP, none of them is more influenced by Beijing’s politics than Hungary. This coincides with the Hungarian government’s increasingly open anti-Western tone.”
Hungary Blocks EU Sanctions Against China
One of Hungary’s most visible statements in recent times: on Wednesday (May 5), Hungary blocked for the second time in three weeks the adoption of an EU resolution on sanctions against China. The motion is aimed at condemning Beijing’s reform of Hong Kong’s electoral law. Back in mid-April, Hungary voted against sanctions against China.
This is not without precedent: Hungary has repeatedly opposed resolutions against Beijing for several years now. In March, when the European Union adopted sanctions against China for human rights violations, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó criticized them as “meaningless and harmful”.
Belief in pragmatism
Hungary’s policy is not motivated by Orbán’s admiration for the Communist Party, but mainly by pragmatism. Orbán calls the country’s friendship with Russia, Central Asia and the Communist Party of China an “open-door policy for the East” – a strategy announced before he came to power in 2010.
Orban wants to expand Hungary’s economic ties, develop new sources of finance and investment, and become more independent of the European Union and Western financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Lack of substantial added value
In an effort to move closer to Beijing, Orbán has kowtowed to the Chinese Communist Party in certain phrases, in addition to blocking moves such as EU resolutions against it. He has repeatedly praised the efficiency of China’s economic and development policies or made it clear that Hungary would not presume to educate itself about the democratic politics of the CCP. 2017 he said in Budapest in the framework of the “16+1” cooperation at the summit of Central and Eastern European countries that “the Eastern Star is high in the air “.
But this does not bring substantial added value to Hungary. As other countries in CEE cooperation have experienced, Beijing has made many promises, but rarely delivered. Trade with the region has not expanded by hundreds of billions of dollars so far, and China has barely fulfilled its investment commitments worth billions of dollars. Instead, countries like Montenegro have even fallen into China’s debt trap.
Dubious projects
The largest Chinese direct investment in Hungary in 10 years is still the 1.2 billion euros injected in 2011 when it bought the aniline plant BorsodChem. There have been no other significant large investments to date, but there have been a number of questionable projects.
In 2013 the Chinese technology company Huawei set up a regional logistics center in Hungary. Hungary is the only EU country to involve Huawei in expanding its 5G network, despite the EU’s long-standing reservations about the company due to suspected spying for the Chinese government and covert surveillance technology.
The Cradle of Communist Party Cadres in Budapest
In 2014, China, Serbia and Hungary agreed to build a modern railroad between Budapest and Belgrade. Hungary loaned 2 billion euros to China for this purpose, the details of which remain secret to this day. Experts strongly doubt the benefits of the project, which is also suspected of corruption: those involved include Orbán’s childhood friend Lörinc Mészáros, who has risen from a small gas installer to become Hungary’s richest man in the past 10 years.
At the end of April, Hungary signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Shanghai’s Fudan University, which plans to spend 1.5 billion euros to build a Fudan Hungarian campus for 6,000 to 8,000 students. This elite Chinese university is considered the cradle of Communist Party cadres and intelligence officers.
Beijing’s Intelligence Base in Europe
The plan to open a branch of Fudan University is particularly alarming for observers. Szabolcs Panyi, an investigative journalist for the Hungarian online media outlet Direkt36, published a lengthy report in March on the Communist Party’s espionage activities in Hungary. According to the report, Hungary has become an important stronghold for Beijing’s intelligence work in Europe.
The report also claims that Chinese students in Hungary, of which there are currently about 2,800, are systematically absorbed as spies. In addition, since 2012, some 20,000 people have purchased residence permits in Hungary under the Golden Visa program, 80 percent of whom are Chinese citizens. Journalist Panyi points out that Hungary has thus been accused of being a Trojan horse under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
A clear contradiction
Overall, there are clear contradictions in Hungary’s CCP policy, says political scientist Krejko. “On the one hand, the Hungarian government repeatedly emphasizes its sovereignty to the EU and the US; at the same time, Hungary is becoming more and more dependent on the CCP and is caught in a debt trap. This is much more dangerous than dependence on Brussels.”
The Hungarian government refrained from commenting on many questions raised by Deutsche Welle about its CCP policy, responding only to the blocking of the EU resolution on China, saying that the EU has already made many statements on the Hong Kong issue and that no further statements are needed.
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