China wants to start a university in Hungary, with Hungary’s own money paying for the privilege. On June 5, approximately 10,000 protested in Budapest against the proposed Fudan university campus. China is allegedly corrupting Hungarian leaders, and Hungary’s president has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Hungarian people are right to rise up against any political leaders who are compromised by the Beijing regime. The greatest danger to our democracies today is the risk that for a few bucks, China can buy off presidents, foreign ministers, and treasury officials to do Beijing’s bidding, rather than the bidding of the voters.
The controversy in Budapest is indicative of a much broader struggle between democracy and dictatorship. In 2019, Fudan University deleted references to “freedom of thought” in its charter. The expensive project, planned for completion in Budapest by 2024, will be funded by over $1 billion in loans from China. It’s price tag is more than the government spends on all other universities together, and will leech government funding from Hungarian higher education and increase Hungary’s indebtedness to China.
Hungary’s government is led by Viktor Orban and his supposedly right-wing party, Fidesz. But Orban has close ties to Beijing and Moscow, and is pushing a foreign policy of “Eastern Opening.”
Huawei has 70 percent of the Hungarian telecommunications market, and Hungary is purchasing a $15 billion nuclear plant from Russia. Just this month, Orban’s government blocked a European Union statement against China’s abuse of Hong Kong. His actions are those of a Trojan horse for Beijing and Moscow in both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A U.S. official told EuroObserver in 2019 that Hungary’s “corruption problem creates pathways for Russian and Chinese influence.” He added, “One of the initiatives that we’ll be unveiling is US support for efforts to look more closely at the intersections between corruption and Russian and Chinese influence.”
