Sino-Hungarian relations and Orbán’s travels

On May 8, 2024, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Budapest, Hungary, for a two-day state visit at the invitation of Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok and Prime Minister to celebrate 75 years of Sino-Hungarian relations.

To help shed light on relations between Hungary and China, I sat down and spoke with Dr. Levente Horváth, the founding Director of the Eurasia Center of the John von Neumann University in Hungary. Horvath is a China expert and fluent in Mandarin Chinese. The Eurasia Center’s research focuses on geopolitical, economic, and social developments and trends across Eurasia. Horváth oversees the Center’s multifaceted research activities, exchange programs, and conferences ,which are designed to contribute to a better understanding of ideas and factors that lead to economic development and greater Eurasian connectivity and integration.

His new book – Chinese Geopolitical Thinking: The Belt and Road Initiative from a Chinese Perspective – presents a nuanced (and unorthodox) interpretation of the ideas that motivate China’s foreign policy, including its much-bruited Belt and Road. He challenges Western narratives about China in that myth-busting volume.

The interview was in two parts, beginning in Budapest following Xi’s meetings with Orbán. Since that portion of the interview took place prior to Orbán’s recent high visibility “peace missions” to Kiev, Moscow, Beijing and Washington, we spoke again, continuing the interview as I sought to try to better understand Orbán’s motivations in seeking an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia in the face of Brussels’s unhappy reaction to his trips. Here is the pieced-together interview:

Q: It has been all over the news that Orbán seeks a diplomatic solution – so