Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Has Hungary become China’s puppet?

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

Hungary-China relations have traditionally been good for decades, and it is a well-known fact that Hungary has long been considered as a key partner for China in Central Europe. None of that has ever posed a threat to Budapest’s Euro-Atlantic relations. Until now.

Today the situation is quite different due to a combination of China’s rise and Orbán’s efforts to build of an authoritarian regime.

Perhaps the latest and quite probably the most profitable era of Hungary-China relations began around the time of the communist collapse in Eastern Europe. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hungary has seen the influx of the Chinese traders who laid the foundations of the populous Chinese community in Budapest. Due to their local knowledge and relations to their motherland, they played a major role in Hungary becoming a key partner for China in the region. By the 2000s, this connection resulted in such significant and widely publicized acts as the opening of the bilingual Hungarian-Chinese school in Budapest.

On the other hand, the genuinely important and favourable Chinese trade and cultural relations were never expected to override Hungary’s political commitment to the West. Neither the former Hungarian governments, nor the Chinese side has ever forced it, but the trend appears to have been changing recently.

The process is driven, at least partly, by China’s changing foreign policy.

Having realized its economic and political power, China has become an increasingly active factor in shaping world politics and wants to assume a growing role in the international arena.

No matter how often we disapprove of China’s methods, we cannot deny Beijing’s right to follow its own interest, just like every other country does. The onus is on China’s partners who should, knowing and understanding all that, conduct such a foreign policy that is in line with their own interests and benefits both parties.

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That is why we are increasingly concerned about the process unfolding around the Orbán government. What we see is the formation of a highly unilateral dependence on China, and it has gone beyond the business and cultural sphere. Uniquely among all EU Member States, this dependence has already appeared in the political field, which poses an enormous risk to Hungary as well as the EU.

The first high-profile case was the planned Budapest-Belgrade railway. Funded through Chinese loans, implemented with Chinese technology and mostly carried out by Chinese enterprises, the contracting terms of the supposed project are classified for many years. Every study shows that the Hungarian side would not benefit from this project at all. But China would, and very much, too. The next sign was the Orbán government’s increasingly frequent and friendly statements to side with China in political issues as well. Interestingly enough, the Orbán regime, after having driven the US-founded Central European University out of Hungary by way of administrative measures combined with political accusations against the internationally renowned institution, is now offering hugely preferential treatment to China’s Fudan University, so it could establish a campus in Budapest.