On Europe Day Budapest was filled with Chinese flags, Orban and Xi signed a series of agreements

Hungary and China signed a series of new agreements to deepen their economic and cultural cooperation during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the central European country on Thursday. The trip was aimed at strengthening China’s economic footprint in the region.

Xi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks in the capital Budapest as part of the Chinese leader’s final stop on a five-day tour of Europe, which also included Serbia and France. During a press conference after the talks, Orbán praised the “continuous and unbroken friendship” between the two countries since he took office in 2010 and promised that Hungary would continue to welcome further Chinese investment.

“I would like to assure the President that Hungary will continue to offer fair conditions to Chinese companies investing in our country,” Orbán said.

Beijing has invested billions in Hungary and sees the European Union member as an important base within the 27-member trading bloc. In December, Hungary announced that one of the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturers, China’s BYD, would open its first European electric vehicle production plant in the south of the country – a move that could improve the industry’s competitiveness in Europe.

Hungary is also home to several Chinese electric vehicle battery factories and hopes to become a global hub for the production of lithium-ion batteries. Hungary has launched a rail project – part of Xi’s Belt and Road initiative – to connect the country to the Chinese-controlled port of Piraeus in Greece as an import point for Chinese goods in central and eastern Europe.

On Thursday, Xi said he and Orbán agreed that the “One Belt and One Road” initiative was “very much in line with Hungary’s strategy of opening up to the east”.

Hungarian and Chinese officials concluded a strategic partnership agreement and signed 18 other agreements and memoranda of understanding, but no major investments were announced at the press conference.

However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó later said in a Facebook video that initial talks had begun on developing a rail freight bypass from Budapest from China and a rail link between the capital and Budapest’s Ferihegy airport.

Orbán, a populist nationalist leader who has cultivated closer ties with Beijing while distancing himself from his more mainstream EU partners, noted during the press conference that three-quarters of investment in Hungary last year came from China and spoke about Beijing’s role in changing the balance of power in the world.

“If you look back at the world economy and world trade 20 years ago, it is nothing different from the one we live in today,” Orbán said. “Back then we lived in a single polar world, and now we live in a multi-polar world order, and one of the main pillars of this new world order is China.”

He added that Hungary would try to expand economic cooperation with China in the field of nuclear energy. Hungary is currently working with Russia to expand its nuclear plant in Paks with a new reactor, which is expected to go into operation by the end of the decade.

During Xi’s visit, Budapest residents faced road closures and heightened security as groups of his supporters and critics gathered in various parts of the city to demonstrate.

Hundreds of people gathered near Budapest’s Buda Castle, waving Chinese and Hungarian flags in the hope of catching a glimpse of Xi’s motorcade. There were many Chinese nationals present, wearing red baseball caps and claiming to be volunteers from the Chinese embassy.

A Hungarian MP from the opposition Momentum party told the Associated Press that he and a colleague were approached by a group of such men on Wednesday as they tried to place EU flags on a bridge in Budapest.

/The Geopost