Hungary deal to help China bolster foothold
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has signed a security pact with China that includes an agreement for joint police patrols, in a new sign of his determination to let his counterpart increase its foothold in the European Union.
China’s public security minister, Wang Xiaohong, visited Budapest at the weekend at the start of a tour of Europe. He clashed with Alejandro Mayorkas, the US homeland security secretary, over issues ranging from US immigration officials’ treatment of Chinese citizens to the international trade in opioids but he received a warm welcome in Hungary.
Orban has heavily promoted Chinese investment in Hungary as a counterbalance to the EU. He has also crossed swords with EU members over his attitude to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and pursued good relations with other populist leaders around the world.
Even so, a “security pact” between the Chinese Communist Party and a state that is a member of both the EU and Nato is highly unusual.
The full text of the agreement, signed by Wang and Hungarian interior minister Sandor Pinter, was not made public and details were left vague in the two sides’ public statements. However, the Hungarian statement said it would involve “enhancing co-operation in law enforcement and joint patrols”.
The pact appears to be modelled on a similar arrangement in Serbia, which is outside the EU but whose nationalist leader, President Aleksandar Vucic, is close to Orban. There, uniformed Chinese police have joined local officers to patrol areas with significant numbers of Chinese tourists and businesses.
Italy, which has by far the biggest Chinese population in Europe, also briefly hosted Chinese police, but put a stop to the collaboration after the presence of a network of undercover police stations in cities across Europe, including Britain, was uncovered in 2022. There were allegations that the stations were being used to put pressure on Chinese citizens while abroad.
Hungary was also found to be hosting such police stations but quickly put the controversy behind it. “Further co-operation will be based on the longstanding friendship between the two countries,” Orban said.
Wang hoped “the two countries will deepen co-operation in areas including counterterrorism, transnational crimes, security and law-enforcement capacity building”, according to Chinese media.
The warm statements were a contrast to China’s tense relations with other EU countries. After Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the UK foreign secretary, met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, last week, his office said that he had “unambiguously set out the United Kingdom’s position across a number of areas of disagreement”.