Orbán rolls out the red carpet for “longtime friend” Xi Jinping. China and Hungary sign 16 cooperation agreements

Brussels – Xi Jinping’s European tour ends amid waving Chinese flags in Budapest. After the trilateral meeting with Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen in Paris and the visit to Serbia, China’s president is the guest today (May 9) of his Hungarian “longtime” friend. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Budapest (and Europe Day, by a strange twist of fate), Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Xi will sign 16 cooperation agreements, ushering in a new phase of relations between the Asian giant and its closest ally in the European Union.

The Chinese premier and his wife, Peng Liyuan, were received in the morning by Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok at the presidential palace and then made their way—accompanied all along by hundreds of people waving Chinese and Hungarian flags—to Buda Castle, where they paraded on a red carpet while national anthems resounded. The ceremony was attended by numerous officials from both countries, including Prime Minister Orbán.

The agreements, announced recently by the Hungarian government, cover a wide range of sectors, from rail and road infrastructure to nuclear power and automobiles. Budapest has been attracting numerous Chinese companies and large electric vehicle and battery manufacturing projects for years. Investments worth tens of billions of euros, of which the Hungarian opposition has denounced the opacity of contracts, the environmental impact of factories, and corruption. Investments that would enrich the narrow “Orbán circle.”

According to the data of the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), in 2022, China’s trade surplus with Hungary was nearly $8 billion: Budapest imported goods from the People’s Republic worth $10.5 billion (6.88 per cent of total imports, second only to Germany), while exports to China stopped at $2.89 billion. A steadily increasing gap in recent years that, added to the series of billion-dollar contracts Orbán has signed with Beijing, has been called by the ISPI “a debt trap” with China.

However, the increasingly close ties with China have been part of the policy pursued by Orbán since 2010, which looks eastward and winks at Moscow and Beijing. On the conflict in Ukraine, Orbán’s position is much closer to that of China than that of the European Union, as evidenced by recent clashes between the other 26 and Hungary over sanctions on the Kremlin and the Ukraine fund. In an editorial published in Hungary’s pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet before his arrival, Xi He praised the 75 years of diplomatic relations in which “China and Hungary have remained good friends and learned from each other,” proposing “greater mutual political trust” and joint leadership of “regional cooperation and maintaining the right direction of China-Europe relations” in order to “join forces to face global challenges.”

Sugar-coated statements that echo those made a few days ago in Belgrade by the Chinese president and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vučić. Also, on that occasion, the two leaders signed 28 agreements and memoranda of understanding from infrastructure to culture, sports to technology. Agreements that cannot help but worry Brussels, not precisely in line with the call for greater cooperation to “avoid misunderstanding” that von der Leyen and Macron addressed to Xi on the first leg of his European tour.