Hungary and Shanghai Fudan University signed a strategic cooperation agreement on April 27 to open a campus in the capital Budapest in 2024, AP reported. This will be the first time that a Chinese university will open an overseas campus in one of the 27 EU member states. In response, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony and other dignitaries objected to the plan. Karacsony pointed out that Fudan University’s regulations stipulate that it needs to present the Chinese Communist Party’s worldview, warning that it poses a major national security risk.
It is reported that the Hungarian government officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Fudan University on April 27 in an online format to build a Hungarian campus of Fudan University in Budapest. The Hungarian campus of Fudan University is expected to be opened in 2024 after the completion of the first phase of construction and will enroll 6,000 Hungarian, Chinese and other nationalities students. The campus is planned to offer courses in economics, international relations, medicine and natural sciences to students from all over the world, and graduates will be able to obtain a Hungarian degree, a Chinese degree or a dual degree from China and Hungary. The campus is located south of the center of Budapest, in an abandoned industrial area on the left bank of the Danube. The site has been unused for decades and is currently occupied by graffiti-filled, rubble and dilapidated buildings.
Critics stress that the massive investment places an undue financial burden on the country’s taxpayers and shows Orbán’s warming relations with China and Russia, the newspaper said. Budapest Mayor Karasonyi, from the Dialogue for Hungary party, commented that “they want to bring in a university, which is indeed an international university, but whose charter requires that it represents the world view of the Chinese Communist Party. We see a very serious national security risk in this investment.”
The pre-tax construction cost of the 64-acre (nearly 26 hectares) campus is estimated at $1.8 billion, more than Hungary will spend on its entire higher education system in 2019, according to government documents obtained by Direkt36, a Hungarian investigative journalism center, in April of this year. The Hungarian government plans to provide central funding for 20 percent of the project’s capital investment, and will rely on loans from Chinese banks for the remaining $1.5 billion. Most of the construction work will be done using Chinese materials and labor, according to the documents. According to Karasonyi, “The Chinese are doing everything [for this project], and we are only doing one thing: paying for it.” He said, “If Hungarian taxpayers paid for everything, any of the world’s leading universities would open campuses here.”
The newspaper mentioned that Viktor Orbán’s government, which often confronts the European Union, has been pursuing a so-called “Open East” economic strategy that supports increased diplomatic cooperation and trade growth with China, Russia, Turkey and Central Asian countries. In response, Karasonyi has criticized these policies as making Hungary “a forward stronghold of the Eastern powers within the EU. Last year, Hungary agreed to a $2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China to build a railroad between Budapest and the Serbian capital Belgrade. The project is part of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Hungary is also home to Huawei’s largest supply center outside of China and is the only member state in the European Union to have approved a new vaccine made in China.
Peter Kreko, director of the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital, said in an interview that the development of Fudan University is one of China’s efforts to expand its soft power and influence through educational programs and investments. He told reporters that “in the last few years, Hungary has become a spy center for Russian and Chinese spies because of the lack of willingness of Hungarian intelligence to resist the evil forces of the state.” The U.S. Embassy in Hungary expressed reservations about the arrival of Chinese universities in Budapest “given Beijing’s well-documented record of using academic institutions to advance a malign influence agenda and stifle intellectual freedom.” Neither a Hungarian government spokesman nor the ministry in charge of the project responded to multiple requests for comment.
The site of Fudan University’s Hungarian campus was planned for a university town open to 8,000 Budapest students, which would have provided housing, recreational and sports facilities for the students. Krisztina Baranyi, the mayor of Budapest’s 9th district, where the project is located, said the interests of the capital and its students are being overtaken by the Fudan campus project. She said a referendum will be launched locally to stop the project’s construction. “There is no dialogue (on the establishment of this project) and they are not including us in anything,” Baranyi said. She added, “I think a referendum is the only way to show that we don’t agree with this.”
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