Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is set to announce a range of new investments in Budapest as he touts Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary as a model for what the EU’s relationship could look like with the world’s second-largest economy.
Xi was received by Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok yesterday as he started the final leg of his trip to Europe in five years, following stops in France and Serbia. During a meeting with Orban he is expected to announce more than a dozen deals covering rail, road and energy projects. Hungary’s cash-strapped government is also looking to lock in financing for some of the investments.
Xi is urging Europe to work with him to overcome trade tensions that threaten to derail a global economic recovery, holding up Hungary as an EU member where Beijing has managed to create a “strong, fruitful and dynamic” relationship.
Photo: AFP
“Our two countries need to lead regional cooperation and keep to the right direction of China-Europe relations,” Xi said in an op-ed published in the Hungarian ruling party’s newspaper Magyar Nemzet on Wednesday.
The comments coincide with growing tension between Beijing and Brussels, with European leaders accusing Xi’s government of flooding their markets with cheap exports that threaten jobs. Xi’s support for Russia despite its war in Ukraine has thrown the relationship further off balance.
Hungary has gone all-in on economic links with China under Orban’s leadership, attracting an estimated close to 10 billion euros (US$10.7 billion) in planned or ongoing investments over the past few years, mostly in the electric vehicle (EV) industry.
BYD Co, the Chinese EV giant, picked Hungary as the site of its first European car factory, edging out the likes of Germany and France, which had also coveted the investment. Hungary is also a hub for car battery producers, with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd building a 7.3 billion euro plant in the eastern city of Debrecen.
The meetings in Budapest would hone in on expanding China’s economic footprint, much as they did in Serbia. The costly upgrade of an aging rail network and the construction of a long-delayed connection between Budapest Airport and the capital’s downtown are among the projects under discussion.
Those might complement a multi-billion dollar rail track modernization between Belgrade and Budapest as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure project. Hungary is the only EU nation that is a part of the initiative.
Orban has frequently clashed with the US and the EU over the rule of law, as well as close ties to Russia and China, and has rejected Western pressure to reduce links with Beijing or to back a more critical approach on trade and human rights.
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