A few weeks ago, we saw some mass protests in Budapest, in which protesters expressed their displeasure at the supposed economic corruption that runs rampant in the country – corruption that they believed the government was complicit in, or at least indifferent to.
The protests were huge, with a peak of 100,000 participants. Four or five more demonstrations have since been held, some in medium-sized cities where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party has strong support. We reflect on similar major uprisings in other countries, such as in France in 1968, when demonstrations, unable to be suppressed by the security services, forced Charles de Gaulle to resign. In Budapest, protesters appeared to be anti-Orbán, but police generally tried to keep the peace, rather than forcibly remove them.
It appeared as if Orbán’s state control was collapsing, given that there was no evidence of his own resistance. This superficial assessment is wrong – something we must morally admit. The mistake was not recognizing the difference between the Budapest of 2024 and the Paris of 1968. It is not that the demonstrations were insufficient, nor that the issue was closed. In fact, last weekend there were more demonstrations in the provincial town of Debrecen.
Our possible mistake was to take it for granted that Orbán was a “strongman” pursuing a repressive regime, ruling by intimidation. Authoritarian leaders rule with monstrous power and fear, so any demonstration that might appear to weaken the regime must be quashed. In such a government, when such demonstrations take place, the police try to crush them with immediate action and mass arrests. Orban has made no such move. Obviously he is not a loose personality, but he has done everything possible to show citizens that they have the right to express their opinion en masse. He is of the opinion that the matter will resolve itself. The really powerful and sane people would claim that Hungary is a civilized country. So far, neither the protesters nor the government have turned violent.
Many in Europe and the United States who see Orbán as an authoritarian leader may need to think again. I had never seen him as that kind of statesman, but I expected him, in the state of panic I believed he might be in, to probably act as one would in that situation. This does not mean that his policies should be praised. It means they are not superficial. Demons exist, but demonizing someone you disagree with is as dangerous as actual dictators. Orbán’s reluctance to use force is partly due to the nature of his government and partly to his desire to show that the European Union has misled him – and that, above all, it is right to keep Hungary at a comfortable distance from the institutional European organ.
In this case, the European dimension is crucial. Europeans see Orbán as responsible for Hungary’s opposition to European values, generally assuming that without him, Hungary would fall back on European values. Watching what appeared to be protesters in numerous videos, we saw people holding signs condemning corruption. We didn’t see anyone demanding immigrant access to Hungary, gay rights and other Western European values. So if the protesters had ousted Orbán – even if that was indeed what they were aiming for – it seems unlikely that they would have changed the trajectory of Hungarian politics.
Anyone who thinks Orbán is losing support is making a wishful thinking mistake. They are wrong to see the protests as a rejection of Orbán’s ideological and political principles.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced new Chinese investments in Hungary and strengthened bilateral relations. China and Hungary have upgraded their relationship to a “comprehensive all-weather strategic partnership for the new era,” as the Chinese President announced during a joint conference with the Hungarian Prime Minister in Budapest on May 9. The two countries also signed 18 economic cooperation agreements, including plans to complete planned railway infrastructure projects, construction of an oil pipeline connecting Hungary and Serbia, joint development of a cloud services platform between Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and Hungarian telecommunications company 4iG Nyrt’ also agreed to expand their cooperation in the field of nuclear energy.
In Hungary, President Xi Jinping sought to reward Budapest’s China-friendly policy amid escalating EU-China trade and political tensions, elevating the two countries’ ties to one of Beijing’s highest profile bilateral relations and announcing nearly 16 billions of euros in new infrastructure investments in the Central European country. In this way, President Xi underlines the importance of maintaining China’s influence in Central and Eastern Europe and the potential benefits for countries in the region from maintaining friendly relations with Beijing.
Hungary, in particular, is a key element of Beijing’s divide-and-conquer strategy in the European Union, which aims to exploit the underlying political and economic divisions between individual EU member states through a combination of targeted economic coercion and co-optation that they will sow diverse divisions within the European complex. China seeks to effectively prevent the bloc from adopting significant economic restrictions against it. Budapest’s deal with Huawei to develop telecommunications infrastructure in the country could exacerbate tensions between Hungary and its Western allies, given US pressure and ongoing EU efforts to phase out Chinese equipment from critical infrastructure of the European group.
President Xi’s visit to Hungary, the third stop on a week-long trip to Europe that also took the Chinese leader to France and Serbia, comes nearly a year after the European Union formally launched its “danger avoidance” campaign. against China, which has led the European Commission to launch multiple anti-subsidy investigations into imports of Chinese “green” technologies into the European Union in recent months. Hungary has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for infrastructure development since 2015, and in recent years has systematically opposed EU criticism of Beijing’s human rights record and Taiwan issue policy.
