Xi Jinping: both China and Hungary are heading towards a brighter future

Viktor Orbán opened the press conference by pointing out that it has been twenty years since a Chinese president last visited Hungary. He said that 20 years ago the world was still unipolar, but now we have a multipolar world, with China being one of its centers. He thanked the Chinese President for helping Hungary during the Covid-19 epidemic and stressed that Hungary has only ever recognised this one China.

Orbán then spoke about the Russian-Ukrainian war, and said that Hungary was the only country in the European Union on the side of peace. It was for this reason that he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping's peace proposal.

Orbán then spoke about the fourfold increase in Chinese-Hungarian trade in the past twenty years. Moreover, as he said, there used to be only one flight between the two countries back then, and now there are seven. He said it was an honor that China had invited Hungary into the Chinese economy and that the Chinese were participating in the modernisation of the Hungarian economy. Orbán added that

last year, three quarters of all investment coming into Hungary was from China, for which we were in competition with other countries in the region.

Orbán said that Hungary had lost the 20th century on a grand historical scale, and therefore its goal was to win the 21st century. He then thanked China for the investments coming to Hungary and the good diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries. He announced that Chinese-Hungarian cooperation will be extended to the nuclear industry, which is an area in which there has been no cooperation until now. Their plan is that by the beginning of the next decade, 60% to 70% of energy production in Hungary will be from nuclear sources.

Xi: Chinese-Hungarian relations have never been as good as they are now

Xi Jinping spoke after Orbán, thanking President Tamás Sulyok and Prime Minister Orbán for the invitation and hospitality, and conveyed the greetings of the Chinese people to the Hungarians. He mentioned that the two countries have had diplomatic relations for 75 years, and these have never before been as good as they are now.

Xi said that he and Orbán had discussed the most important issues in detail. They agreed that China and Hungary have always had good relations, but they are keen to further improve this relationship. For this reason,

the two countries will enter into a strategic partnership for the forthcoming period, which will put Chinese-Hungarian relations on the golden road.

Xi said that the Belt and Road initiative and Hungary's opening up to the East are compatible, which is why the two countries will embark on joint projects. One of these will be to boost the teaching of the Hungarian language in China and of the Chinese language in Hungary, as well as to develop Hungarian-Chinese financial relations.

Xi also explained that China supports Hungary in accelerating its growth and in playing a bigger role in the European Union. He added that China and Hungary have similar stances on many important international and regional issues, and therefore announced that they want to promote closer cooperation between the two countries.

Xi concluded by saying that he believes that both China and Hungary are heading towards a brighter future.

Agreements of historic proportions

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó started his press conference shortly after the press conference of Xi and Orbán concluded.

The Minister pointed out that the negotiations had been very successful, with agreement reached on 18 issues. The most important is that they will draw up a list of infrastructure projects that they would like to implement jointly. These include:

• Hungary will begin working with the Chinese on preparing a freight rail line which will bypass Budapest. This is what used to be called the V0.
• We will start preparing a high-speed railway link to Budapest Liszt Ferenc Airport with the Chinese.
• Hungary will partner with China in developing Hungary’s network of electric car charging stations.
• A new border crossing between Serbia and Hungary with a higher capacity will be opened. The reason for this, according to Szijjártó, is that the Röszke crossing is extremely congested and the queues of trucks and cars have been too long.
• In cooperation with the Chinese and the Serbs, a study is being launched to find the fastest and best way to build an oil pipeline between Serbia and Hungary.
• It is now possible to export cherries and cattle breeding material to China.
• An agreement has also been reached about launching a nuclear cooperation that will cover the whole spectrum of the production of nuclear energy.

Szijjártó concluded the press conference by saying that this has been a historic visit and that the agreements reached are of historic proportions.

An ever closer economic cooperation

In recent years, China has become one of Hungary's most important economic and trade partners, with Chinese investment having surged especially after the Covid-19 outbreak. China started to industrialise much later than Western countries and Japan, which meant that for a long time they were only able to participate in world trade by producing simpler products. However, they are now catching up with European and Japanese brands in car manufacturing and have overtaken the Western world in battery production.

This means that Chinese companies can now develop sophisticated, high-quality products that they want to sell in as many parts of the world as possible. Europe, which is lagging behind in the development of electric cars and batteries, is one of their most important markets, making it an ideal market for Chinese batteries and cars.

It is important for Chinese companies to be able to manufacture their products sold in the EU within the EU, both for logistical reasons and also to avoid protective tariffs in the event of a potential Chinese-European trade war. Although Chinese investors are present in other countries too, compared to Hungary's size, there has been a particularly large number of announcements about Chinese factories being built in Hungary recently.

The biggest of these is the CATL battery factory in Debrecen, which would cost €7.3 billion, or around HUF 2 900 billion. The second largest is BYD's car plant in Szeged, which according to unconfirmed press reports and industry rumours would cost €5 billion, or almost HUF 2,000 billion.

The Chinese president and his delegation will be in Hungary until Friday 10 May, or as the Chinese president put it in his publication in the pro-government Magyar Nemzet: he came to visit his Hungarian friends "at a time when the scent of flowers and grass fills the air in the Great Hungarian Plain". According to Xi Jinping, the Chinese-Hungarian friendship is "like fine Tokaj wine: fragrant, sweet, rich and long-lasting".