"Hungary’s willingness to enter security arrangements with Xi Jinping and do the bidding of Vladimir Putin while, simultaneously, maintain membership in NATO and the EU is deeply troubling and presents an existential crisis for those alliances," writes Elaine Dezenski, senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in the U.S.
The €3.8 billion Serbia-Hungary railway project, financed by Chinese loans under the BRI, is expected to be completed by 2025, but some estimates suggest that it will take a further 979 years — or nearly a millennium — for Hungary to break even on the project.
Hungary’s BRI issues are not unique. As described in a new report on the BRI, "Tightening the Belt or End of the Road", many BRI projects around the world face serious challenges, from hydroelectric dams with thousands of cracks in Ecuador, to promised infrastructure that was never built in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to massive debt distress in Zambia.
"Despite the problems for host countries and the large portfolio of failing loans for China, Beijing has still been successful at building influence across authoritarian-leaning regimes, who are eager to follow the Chinese model of single-party state control and high-tech domestic repression," Dezenski says..
While Western states have awoken to the risk of overreliance on Chinese supply lines, Hungarian officials are taking the opposite approach, going so far as to call de-risking suicidal.
This position, however, doesn’t impact Hungary alone. The entire EU market is open to Chinese manipulations through the Hungarian economy, such as dumping of cheap goods to prop up the failing Chinese economy or undermining domestic European industries with subsidised competitors.
As German chemical giant BASF seeks to disengage from China’s Xinjiang region, leaked documents indicate that China is planning to build a chemical hub in Hungary.
I agree, China has been fueling conflicts in modern times like no other country in the world. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, Ukraine, N&S Korea... (The list is too long to even be written down). Chinese secret services have always been mendeling around for the interest of big chinese corporations and weapon sales. Let's remember how they also tried to invade their geographical neighbour Taiwan in '61 in whats today remembered as "The bay of pigs invasion" (look it up on wikipedia), just because they were politically aligned with us (and they should be free to do so!); simply inacceptable and outlaw by our international laws.
Not to mention how with its powerful army the CPC imposes its control over the world's trade, even on the other side of the world, where they clearly have no business in controlling it.
Not to mention africa, where after hundres of years of stealing african resources, the Chinese are now upset that we are actually building their infrastructure and instead complain that those countries will have to repay the debt to us (duh, we arent doing it for free!). It's so ironic that after thousand years of chinese colonization it must be us treating african countries like actual political partners rather than broke savages to just send aids and charity etc.
God, this is obviously possible due to the fact that in China, there is no democracy, but a one-party system that always stays in power. I don't understand why they are not smart enough to at least pretend there is two parties (that would actually be the same, obviously) to give the people and the international press the impression of a functioning democracy (like here in the west, where we can choose between tens of parties that don't radicalize on idiotic minor non-issues to pretend to be different but actually all doing the same interests).