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This Budapest academic institution may help Chinese intelligence
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Little is known about the Budapest-based China-CEE Institute, but experts say that it could have ties with Chinese intelligence services.
The China-CEE Institute in Budapest pays thousands of euros to Central European academics to write studies on the political, economic, and social events in their respective country. This alone would not be interesting, but the institute in the Hungarian capital is funded by the Chinese government and may have links to Chinese intelligence, writes HVG.
According to several Czech experts,
there is a possibility that the China-CEE Institute is helping Chinese intelligence. The Budapest-based institution is nothing more than a spy organisation disguised as a scientific workshop, and the studies that are commissioned from researchers are in fact reports.
The China-CEE Institute was founded in Budapest in 2017 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Other concerns
This is not the only institution that has recently raised concerns in public life in Hungary. Direkt36 has examined how China’s influence in Hungary has strengthened over the past ten years with the help of the Hungarian government. They found that the Budapest campus of Fudan could be considered a risk to national security.
Populism is the best form of government. Electing members for 4 year terms to parliaments does not really work because that is tantamount to a 4 year dictatorship. Unusual problems can come up and since the elected members are suppose to represent their constituents, they must discover the voters’ points of view. With the advent of computers, consulting the population is becoming easier all the time. This allows populism the only form of government that will be acceptable for the new generations.
Biden is really pushing Hungary into the Chinese camp. Biden is not politically astute.
Would be nice if people also started looking into how the US spies on its allies (ex: under the Obama administration, the US government listed in on Angela Merkel’s conversation) instead of focusing just on China.
While one can be worried about China’s influence, one should also raise their head above the “anti-Chinese/China” rhetoric. It is important to be objective and not subjective, as the foreign policy of a country does not need useless emotions or weak-willed leaders.