Chinese President Xi Jinping said mutual political trust provides a “solid foundation” for strengthening China-Hungary ties at a joint press conference with his host Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday, NBC News reports.
The two leaders signed 18 agreements with a focus on infrastructure projects. Xi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks in the capital Budapest on the final stop of the Chinese leader’s five-day European tour, during which he also visited Serbia and France. In a press briefing after the talks, Orbán praised the “constant, uninterrupted friendship” between the two countries since he began his tenure as prime minister in 2010 and promised that Hungary would continue to welcome Chinese investment. Orbán said:
I would like to assure the president that Hungary will continue to provide fair conditions for Chinese companies investing in our country, and that we will create the opportunity for the most modern Western and the most modern Eastern technologies to meet and build cooperation in Hungary.
Xi said on Thursday that he and Orbán agree that the Belt and Road Initiative is “very much in line with Hungary’s strategy of opening up to the east” and that China supports Hungary to play a bigger role within the EU to promote China-EU relations.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó later said in a Facebook video that initial discussions had begun on China’s development of a freight railway bypassing Budapest and a rail link between the capital and Budapest’s Ferihegy airport.
Orbán noted during the press conference that three-quarters of investment in Hungary last year came from China and spoke about Beijing’s role in the changing balance of power in the world. Orbán said:
Looking back at the world economy and commerce of 20 years ago, it doesn’t resemble at all what we’re living in today. Then, we lived in a single polar world, and now we live in a multi-polar world order, and one of the main columns of this new world order is China.
He said Hungary would seek to expand economic co-operation with China in the field of nuclear energy. Hungary is currently working with Russia to add a new reactor to the Paks nuclear facility, which should be operational by the end of the decade.
