Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, listens during his joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban following their talks at the PM’s office, the former Carmelite Monastery, in Budapest, Hungary on Thursday, May 9 2024. Most countries in the European Union are making efforts to “de-risk” their economies from perceived threats posed by China. But Hungary and Serbia have gone in the other direction.
While Xi and Orbán didn’t unveil concrete agreements following their meeting, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó later said in a video that a deal had been reached on a joint Hungarian-Chinese railway bypass around Budapest, as well as a high-speed train link between the capital and its international airport.
Pursuing a similar strategy is Serbia, Hungary’s neighbor to the south, which has also provided wide opportunities for Chinese companies to exploit its natural resources and carry out large infrastructure projects. Xi’s “shared future” agreement with Belgrade, Vuksanović said, promotes “China’s vision of the international order, the one where China is much more powerful, the one where the Western powers, primarily the US, no longer have the ability to dictate the agenda to others.”
The red-carpet treatment by Serbia and Hungary has worried some of their Western partners, which see China’s incursion into the region as both an economic and security risk. According to Gabriel Escobar, US envoy for the Western Balkans, Xi chose to visit the neighboring countries because they “are open to challenging the unity of the Euro-Atlantic community.”