Hungary: A Partner to China and Threat to the US?

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán talks to Chinese leader Xi Jinping (not pictured) during a bilateral meeting of the Second Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 25, 2019. Andrea Verdelli/Pool/Getty Images

Commentary

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is planning to host China’s Xi Jinping from May 8 to May 10, according to Mr. Orban’s chief of staff. Mr. Orban is arguably the most pro-China of Europe’s national leaders.

Budapest’s friendly relations with Beijing affect European and U.S. national security. As a NATO and European Union member, Hungary can veto operations by either organization. When Hungary takes the rotating presidency of the EU in July, Mr. Orban will have far greater influence in determining the bloc’s direction.

According to China’s state-run media, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto visited Beijing on April 24. He reportedly said that he opposes seeing China as a threat or decoupling with the autocratic country. He prefers to treat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a “partner.” Mr. Orban was the only European leader to attend China’s Belt and Road Forum in October 2023.

Hungary’s friendly approach toward a U.S. and EU adversary has consequences, including for Hungary’s acceptance in Brussels. According to a European Parliament briefing dated April 18, there is concern about “Hungary’s repeated abuse of the right of veto and blackmail in the European Council.” In 2021, for example, Hungary vetoed an EU statement criticizing the CCP for its infringement of civil liberties in Hong Kong. A European Parliament resolution has asked whether Hungary can “credibly perform” its planned EU presidency given its failure to uphold EU values.

Mr. Orban is apparently friendly with China for the usual reasons. He wants more investment and trade with the autocratic country, and his pro-China position is paying dividends. At $11.5 billion in 2023, China is Hungary’s biggest investor.

Hungary’s “partnership” with China could also affect U.S. economic competitiveness. Budapest is apparently attempting to use Chinese investment to pull ahead of the United States in electric vehicle battery production. China currently has 79 percent of the world’s lithium-ion battery production capacity, with the United States and Hungary in distant second and third place, at 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

China’s state-owned Fiberhome Telecom Tech also plans a $22 million base in Hungary for optical cable production, which could threaten secure communications wherever it is adopted. Fiberhome is a subsidiary of the Wuhan Research Institute of Posts and Telecommunications Company, which the United States added to its export control list in 2020.

Hungary is also seeking infrastructure investment from China, including an oil pipeline to Serbia and a proposed high-speed railway to the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki in Greece. In the process of building this infrastructure, Hungarian palms may be greased at the highest levels of government. This could be at 5 or 10 percent of any given Chinese investment, if the CCP’s alleged practices in other countries are any indication.

However, Beijing may want more for its money than just trade. In what was likely a preparatory visit for a Xi-Orban security agreement, China’s minister of public security, Wang Xiaohong, visited Mr. Orban in February. Mr. Orban sent an unwelcome message during the visit by snubbing a U.S. delegation.

Mr. Wang said he seeks to deepen cooperation with Hungary in “counter-terrorism, combating transnational crimes, security and law enforcement capacity building under the belt and road initiative … to make law enforcement and security cooperation a new highlight of bilateral relations.”

Beijing’s autocracy doesn’t seem to bother Mr. Orban, given his tilt in that direction. Hungary’s membership in the NATO alliance and European Union, however, makes Mr. Orban’s particularly friendly overtures toward the Chinese Communist Party unusual.

Unlike similar trade-oriented overtures by the United States, France, and Germany, Mr. Orban is unlikely to even pretend to raise human rights issues during Xi’s visit in May. He said as early as 2014 that he seeks to end liberal democracy in Hungary, so he is unlikely to press Xi on democratization. That is probably a bridge too far for the United States, France, and Germany.

Mr. Orban is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, so he will likely not care much about Chinese exports of dual-use military materiel that show up in Russian drones downed in Ukraine. The Biden administration is at least mooting a major economic escalation over the issue by threatening to sanction some of China’s banks that facilitate trade with Russian arms manufacturers.

Gergely Gulyas, Mr. Orban’s chief of staff, said that China was “stronger than the European Union” and Hungary’s interests are to improve its economic relations with the country.

“Hungary thinks that it is not worth setting up ideological boundaries when it comes to economic relationships, and we are happy about the Chinese president’s two-day visit,” Mr. Gulyas said.

Supporting a “stronger” rather than more democratic country will hasten the spread of authoritarianism globally. Budapest will find that the closer it gets to Beijing as a junior partner, the more of a pariah state it becomes to the rest of the world. That route did not go well for Russia, Iran, North Korea, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Cuba, or Venezuela, and it will not go well for Hungary.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.