Beijing considers Hungary an important partner in Europe.Continue reading
Titled “Chinese Job,” left-liberal Italian daily La Repubblica published an online article on China’s role in the European economy. In it, Hungary is described as Beijing’s ‘Trojan horse’ in Europe.
“One man’s joy is another man’s sorrow:” this proverb lends itself when discussing the thriving business of any country with China. There is, after all – even if people do not like to admit it – fierce competition among the European economies. The Far Eastern economic colossus is simply indispensable for their own economic growth. This also applies to the industrialized nations, which act as moral guardians and accuse countries like Hungary of China-obedience and cynical disinterest in the face of the human rights situation in the People’s Republic.
So it is not surprising that after Germany, Italy, currently the world’s eighth-largest economy, is now also watching with “burning concern” and a wary eye the economic relations of a country that leading Italian opposition politicians have apostrophized as second-rate. Italy’s trade balance with China in 2022 was 57.5 billion euros, compared with 12 billion USD in Hungary’s case. But unfortunately, left-wing Partito Democratico politicians did not refer to the economy, in which the small Central European country is actually in a different league.
The journalists of La Repubblica, a newspaper close to these political circles, smell crooked deals between Hungary and the Asian superpower in all possible areas. In the textile industry, which is firmly in Chinese hands, especially in central Italy, whose profits are allegedly passed on to middlemen in Hungary for the purpose of tax evasion; in logistics, an area that is obviously an open wound not only for the Netherlands, where the Athens-Skopje-Belgrade-Budapest railroad, modernized with Chinese financing, will transport goods from the Far East to the center of Europe; and in higher education, where the communism club is being wielded in view of the Fudan University that is to be built in Budapest.
The Italian contribution paints the Chinese devil on the Hungarian wall and thus fits the now familiar narrative of the “unreliable country” to a tee. For a change, it is not Russia whose ‘fifth column’ or ‘Trojan horse’ Hungary is supposed to be, but the People’s Republic of China.
A completely different assessment, however, comes from Hungary’s and Italy’s common neighbor Slovenia. A successful entrepreneur in the food industry attests that Hungary is the only EU member state that is beginning to resist Chinese domination of its industry. Silvo Pečjak believes that every country should strive for self-sufficiency in food. What the Trump administration set in motion, namely moving production back to its own country, the European Union should also do so.
Hungary as China’s Trojan horse or as a lone, tactical fighter for greater leeway vis-à-vis the People’s Republic – as is so often the case, is infinitely more complex in reality than some journalists in the mainstream press would have us believe.
This article by Ferenc Rieger was originally published on our sister site Ungarn Heute.
Featured photo via Pexels
