China bought a Hungarian institution of higher education in Budapest!

The Wekerle Sándor Üzleti Főiskola (Wekerle Business School) is the first Western investment of a Chinese private schooling group helped by the Chinese government. Wekerle offers careers in China and language programs. Interestingly, the operator of the Hungarian institution has a Communist party committee.

According to eduline.hu, it did not gain much publicity that a Chinese group bought the company behind the Wekerle Business School in Budapest. The new owner is the Hope Education Group, one of China’s biggest private schooling companies. Now Wekerle offers careers in China, language programs, master’s degree programs in Malaysia, and EUR 4,000 scholarships that await even Chinese students in their campus in Europe’s heart.

Interestingly, the Chinese private education company has its own Communist Party committee, follows the education policies of the Chinese Communist Party and even trains young Marxists in China. In 2016, a new investor put money into the education group, Everbright Holdings. Everbright is China’s oldest and largest state-owned financial conglomerate. Thanks to that investment, the schooling group could expand abroad.

The Chinese private schooling group has two institutions outside China: in Malaysia and Thailand. The Hungarian Wekerle is their third foreign acquisition and the first in Europe. The Hungarian government negotiated about establishing a campus for China’s Fudan University in South Budapest. Opposition parties protested, but the project was halted because of the Orbán administration’s investment stop due to economic problems.