András Kosztur is a researcher at the XXI. Század Intézet, a Hungarian government-affiliated political research institute known for its numerous works, surveys and conferences on social and political issues. The Ukrainian-born Hungarian analyst András Kosztur is a specialist in the post-Soviet world and is closely following the issue of opening up to the east.
Yann Caspar asked him about Hungary’s policy of opening up to the east, which primarily includes increased cooperation with China and Russia, but also about Hungary’s position in a world again dominated by bloc politics.
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Yann Caspar: In 2024, one of the elite institutions of Chinese higher education, Shanghai’s Fudan University, wants to open its first European campus in Hungary – an intention that Chinese President Xi Jinping himself emphasized and welcomed. While the Hungarian opposition sees this as a threat to national security, the government presents the campus project as one of the possible successes of its policy of opening up to the east. Why do you think Hungary was chosen to create the first institution of its kind in the EU?
András Kosztur: If we look at the situation in Central Europe as a region, we can see that by and large no one – here or anywhere else – wants to give up economic ties with the East, but there is a more pronounced tendency to stand out from others, rather To distance symbolic projects that are suspected of being politically and geopolitically charged. Various governments in the region – some out of a tradition of Russophobia, some more out of conformism – are beginning to take a slavish stance in the application of American geopolitical directives, even if it means getting into rather loud diplomatic conflicts on occasion.
In such a context, from the Chinese point of view, Hungary may appear to be a more reliable partner than others in the region:
a cold-blooded partner who thinks in bilateral relationships based on mutual interest – not to mention the fact that, thanks to its state stability, the Chinese run less risk of seeing a project torpedoed on the occasion of an unforeseen coalition crisis or as a political pretext for such a crisis to be used.
Yann Caspar: If the Hungarian government is to be believed, its policy of opening up to the east, which it announced in 2012, is a success. In reality, it turns out that the results in trade with non-EU countries have not changed significantly: Compared to the EU average, these figures remain below the aforementioned average. On the one hand, it is true that investment from Asia has increased, with favorable consequences for the labor market; on the other hand, it would not be correct to say that it was the Orbán governments after 2010 that started this process: many of these projects date back to the MSZP-SZDSZ governments before 2010, and it was the head of one of these governments, Péter Medgyessy, who started a policy of rapprochement with China back in 2003 – three or four years before the other countries in the region.
András Kosztur: To come back to my previous answer, here too we must assume that the doctrine of the current Hungarian government is that it is in Hungary’s interest to forge mutually beneficial bilateral relations with any country that makes such relations possible and profitable . The economic weight of the Asian countries is growing steadily, so much so that even in the West most of the dominant powers of the group maintain intense economic relations with them; From such a perspective, the rejection of an opening to the East would be a strange and intriguing attitude, a kind of special path. In Hungary, the context in which the opening to the East can be seen as an innovative feature is as follows:
By announcing his openness to the East – and even proclaiming it as a value in itself – Viktor Orbán has in fact made official one of the elements of his policy, which consists in turning away from the Western phenomenon, which he himself shortly afterwards called “moral imperialism” would call.
Yann Caspar: It’s pretty hard to imagine that the Hungarian government will make any serious decision against the interests of NATO and America. What is new, however, is that the relationship between Washington and Berlin – for many reasons – is no longer as idyllic as it was in the past. How credible would you say that the Hungarian opening up to the east under the guise of a special route actually serves Germany’s economic and political interests – which of course, given Hungary’s dependence on German capital, also favors its own interests – or at least interests which Berlin does not want to openly pursue?
András Kosztur: In the political sphere, secrecy is just as important as publicity in the debate about the management of public affairs. If we add to this the frightening dimensions of the flow of information that surrounds us and the web of global interdependencies, the presence of which can now be felt in all areas of life, almost every statement about politics becomes speculative. Speculative, even ambiguous, since the dynamic of political practice – in contrast to the often seemingly static character of the world of political ideals – makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that two apparently contradicting statements are simultaneously true. With the problem your question raises, We observe precisely this simultaneous validity of opposing statements: It is both correct that American hegemony is no longer unanimously accepted in Germany and that, as is well known, Berlin and Budapest have excellent economic relations despite sometimes heated political disputes. Germany is loyal to the West,
while Hungary often shows a non-conformist attitude towards the “Western collective”, but Germany also has a joint mega-project with the Russians: Nord Stream 2,
while Hungary is one of the countries that support the West’s sanctions policy against Russia.
But let’s come back to the specific case you mention in your question. Indeed, you can say, as you do, that the Hungarian policy of opening up to the east has little economic weight and that it could very well function as a kind of proxy for the German economic giant. From a political point of view, it is very clear that a number of actors – both in Germany and in other Western countries – are of the opinion, for reasons of common sense, that it would be better to follow the Hungarian example, Ob regarding opening up east or elsewhere – the migratory crisis is by far the best example – but they find it impossible to do mainly because of the public opinion in their country – and of course because of the centers of power that influence public opinion. So it is entirely possible that arrangements are made behind the scenes, but it would be a mistake to attach too much importance to them, as public political events and the needs that arise from them can at any time undermine the effect of such arrangements. In short,
Hungary’s opening to the east is undoubtedly an original initiative by Budapest, which has both supporters and opponents in Germany and the rest of the West, and even among our allies in the region.
Yann Caspar: Hungary was one of the first countries in Europe to join the “One Belt One Road” project launched by China in 2013. The modernization of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line was decided in 2014 and, according to official plans, is to be carried out by a Serbian-Hungarian-Chinese consortium and 85% financed by a Chinese loan. It’s a project that ran a lot of ink. The opposition criticizes the lack of transparency and economic relevance. If it is actually implemented, what effects could the modernization of this railway – and in a broader sense the global project started by China in 2013, in which many observers see a strong potential for reorganizing the international scene – have on Hungary?
András Kosztur: If we take Viktor Orbán’s great programmatic speeches as a basis, one of the main driving forces behind politics in the last ten years has been a realization: we suddenly understood that
The story is not over that the balance of power continues to shift
and that disasters and wars are just as possible today as they were in the past. So we must not get careless or hide behind the idea that following the Western roadmap will automatically lead us into a future that is both inevitable and utopian. One of the tectonic shifts in the world today is
the rise of the Asian states and the challenge of the clear dominance of the western states.
The decline of the West is of course an old topic, but the crisis of its values and morals, which has been commented on for ages, was first followed by a demographic decline, before arriving at the current situation in which the supremacy of the economy, even in the economic, technical and military fields West is becoming more and more dubious. And the geopolitical translation of this phenomenon is that in the world order, alongside the Euro-Atlantic center of gravity, which has emerged since the time of the great discoveries, we again see the claim of a Eurasian center of gravity, the configuration of which was practically elevated by China to a foreign policy program – or perhaps one should speak more precisely of a restructuring or renewal,
If this Eurasian center of gravity actually takes the place of the Euro-Atlantic center, this could be advantageous for Hungary in that, after having lived on the periphery of the western world, we would be the neighbors of the main axes of this new world order.
As for the Budapest-Belgrade railway line, it is likely to become a – secondary, but more important – segment of the axes mentioned – a development whose strategic importance could then have implications for the next few decades.
Yann Caspar: You often hear the opposition – and in their mouths it’s an accusation – say that the Hungarian Prime Minister is no longer even a European leader, but rather an Asian dictator. Like most verbal taunts from politicians, these statements can of course partly be explained by rhetorical and communicative considerations. The arguments surrounding the question of whether one belongs to the West or the East, on the other hand, should confuse the reader who does not live in Central Europe. The problem probably has deep socio-historical roots. But how can it be explained that this topic is discussed so passionately in Hungary?
András Kosztur: Actually, the answer lies in the question: The opposition luminaries use a rhetorical device by accusing the government of Eastern tropism in order to present themselves as the only credible representatives of the West.
It is perfectly correct that this opposition represents tendencies which are increasingly dominating in today’s West and which could be characterized in terms such as “political correctness”, “cancel culture” and other such terms. Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz, on the other hand, do not see themselves as Easterners, but as representatives of a different – and more authentic – West.
Of course, this attitude – precisely because of the increasing hegemony of progressive ideals in the West – leads to difficult and ambivalent situations in which it can appear as if Hungary is turning the whole Western world upside down; but the reality is different: In recent years there have been many examples that confirm that in the heart of the West –
in so-called old Europe and the United States – there are many who share the view of the Hungarian government.
The East-West contrast is, of course, a completely different matter in Hungary, for historical reasons that go back well before the Cold War. The eastern “origins” of the Hungarian people naturally form the basis for this question,
but even if we consider Central Europe as a whole, its historical development shows a number of features that distinguish it from the West in the narrower sense.
These peculiarities – that distinguish it, moreover, as much from the East and from the West – the historian Jenő Szűcs in his work Vázlat Európa három Történeti régió-Járol ( “The three historic regions of Europe: A Study”) summarized that in French translation under the title Les trois Europes appeared with a foreword by Fernand Braudel. It is precisely because of this difference that people in the region – not only Hungarians, but also their neighbors – prefer the term Central Europe to the term Eastern Europe. Of course, this Central European identity has only established itself in the last few years: after forty years of belonging to the Eastern bloc, the “backward movement” towards the west was too strong to allow it; people had an idealized image of the West alive within them, an image they wanted to be part of. But in recent decades, their coexistence with the real West in NATO and the EU has also brought to light contradictions and opened up the possibility of a more realistic view of ourselves, the West and the East.
An important part of this process is to dispel the myth that the West is always ahead, always showing us the future and increasing freedom, while the East is backward and doomed by history.
It is just as important, however, that we are able to correctly interpret our own “backwardness” in relation to the West and to decide whether we want to continue to imitate western models or, to use the term coined by Márton Békés, whether we are ready to recognize the “advantages of backwardness”.
Yann Caspar: In a recent article in the daily Magyar Hírlap you write that block politics is back. The fact is that the atmosphere between Washington and Moscow has become increasingly electrified in recent weeks. Of the four countries in the Visegrád Group, Hungary has the best relations with the Russian President. She even tries to have good relations with countries like Belarus or the countries of the Turkish Council. What place will Hungary take in a world that is again dominated by bloc politics?
András Kosztur: It is not in Hungary’s interest to participate in this hysterical crisis of a return to the Cold War, and it can be assumed that its current government will try to maintain the room for maneuver that has been hard-won over the past decade. Of course, it will not be easy for her: If the trends of the last few months continue, if
Washington continues to try to get its allies in line to march against China and Russia,
then the pressure on Budapest will also increase – a situation which the Hungarian opposition will of course try to exploit in their favor.
