Friday, 15 November 2024

Belt and Road Hungary Prepares Warm Welcome for Xi Jinping's European Tour

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Belt and Road Hungary Prepares Warm Welcome for Xi Jinping's European Tour
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shake hands b ROLEX DELA PENA/POOL/AFP via Getty

The governments of China and Hungary confirmed on Monday that genocidal dictator Xi Jinping will visit Budapest between May 8 and May 10 as part of a wider European tour beginning with stops in France and Serbia.

Xi's travel to Hungary is the result of an invitation from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of Xi's closest allies in Europe despite public perceptions that Orbán is an anti-communist conservative.

Hungary was the first country on the continent to sign up to China's predatory Belt and Loan Initiative (BRI) and has enthusiastically welcomed Chinese investment and closer cooperation with Xi's Communist Party.

File/Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (L) shakes hands with Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom on terrace of the presidential palace at Buda Castlein Budapest on October 16, 2009 prior to their official talks. (ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images)

Xi also enjoys friendly relationships with the governments of center-left globalist French President Emmanuel Macron and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić of the Serbian Progressive Party. Serbia is a member of the BRI, while France is not.

Top Chinese Foreign Ministry official Hua Chunying announced the European tour on Monday, to begin in France on May 5.

During the Chinese Foreign Ministry's regular briefing on Monday, spokesman Lin Jian noted that Xi had not traveled to Europe in “nearly five years” and was eager to expand his “vitally important” ties to the three nations in question. Lin recalled Hungary's pivotal role in the BRI – a program in which China offers predatory loans to vulnerable nations used to fund Chinese contractors, and later used to usurp the sovereignty of those countries when they cannot pay.

“Our two countries have had close high-level exchanges, deepened political mutual trust, made fruitful and solid progress in cooperation in various fields, and brought tangible benefits to the two peoples,” Lin siad. “The fact that President Tamás Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán jointly invited President Xi Jinping to visit Hungary shows how much Hungary values and looks forward to this visit.”

Lin also observed that Xi's visit will coincide with the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Budapest.

Hungarian Secretary of State for International Communication Zoltan Kovacs, announcing the visit, emphasized economic cooperation.

“The visit aims to further strengthen inter-state and economic and trade relations between Hungary and China and to expand cooperation to new areas,” he wrote in an announcement on Monday.

The Chinese Communist Party's fruitful ties with Orbán's Hungary are among its most surprising coalitions given Orbán's regular condemnations of Marxism in public statements. China was among the first countries to energetically congratulate Orbán, for example, after his party Fidesz-KDNP won a decisive victory in the 2022 national elections.

“China will continue to staunchly support Hungary in preserving its independent choice of development path,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a congratulatory note to Orbán at the time, declaring that his win showed “the independent policy pursued by the Hungarian side is in line with the country’s national conditions and the common interests of its people.”

Orbán had explicitly declared his win a defeat of the “international left” in his campaign speech.

The BRI is at the core of the Hungary-China political friendship. Orbán last met with Xi in October in Beijing, where he traveled to attend the annual Belt and Road Forum. Orban has attended the event, meant to promote the Chinese debt-trap scheme, for the past three consecutive years.

“The two sides have witnessed the continuous deepening of political mutual trust, fruitful results in mutually beneficial cooperation, rich and colorful people-to-people and cultural exchanges,” Xi Jinping reportedly said at the meeting, “and sound coordination in international and regional affairs, especially in the joint fight against the [Wuhan coronavirus] pandemic, which have strengthened the friendship between the two countries.”

Hungary was the first country in Europe to begin administering a Chinese-made Wuhan coronavirus vaccine product in 2021, created by Chinese state-owned corporation Sinopharm.

“Xi Jinping expressed deep appreciation for Hungary's long and firm pursuit of a friendly policy toward China and active support for Belt and Road cooperation,” a readout of their October meeting read, “and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's attendance at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation for three consecutive times.”

“The Hungarian side firmly believes that the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping will bring major changes to the world, help promote world economic development, and deliver more benefits to people of all countries.

File/Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán walks towards Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) for the handshake before the bilateral meeting of the Second Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People on April 25, 2019 in Beijing, China. (Andrea Verdelli/Pool/Getty Images)

In that meeting, Orbán firmly rejected “any decoupling and breakage of supply and industrial chains” with China, omitting any reference to China's widely documented use of slaves in its supply chains or its rampant intellectual property theft and other illicit practices.

Orbán's visit in October resulted in the signing of five agreements, according to the state-run Global Times, including deals “to promote bilateral cooperation in industrial investment, the exchange of policies in economic development, green and low-carbon development, and the digital economy.”

China's largest electric carmaker, BYD, announced a plan in December to build a factory in Hungary, a move Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto celebrated as “one of the largest investments in the history of the Hungarian economy.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.


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