Diplomacy: Silk Road summit in China – Xi praises Hungary’s Orban

China welcomed numerous state guests on the first day of the international forum on the “New Silk Road” investment project. Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Beijing on Tuesday for one of his rare foreign visits and is scheduled to meet China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday. According to reports, the conflict in the Middle East will also be an issue. China is an important partner of Russia, which has so far supported Moscow in the war against Ukraine through its neutral stance. China was able to ignore the World Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Putin because it never acceded to the so-called Rome Statute of the Court.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban traveled from the EU and spoke to Xi on Tuesday about his country’s future in the Chinese investment and infrastructure project. “We consider you a friend,” Xi said. Hungary has actively participated in the construction of the “New Silk Road” and Sino-Hungarian relations have developed at a high level regardless of the changing international situation. According to Chinese information, Orban thanked Beijing for its support in the construction of the approximately 350 kilometer long railway connection between Budapest and Belgrade – a Silk Road project by China and Hungary.

Hungary is one of a few EU countries that is a member of the initiative. Germany is not part of the project launched by Xi in 2013. Italy is reportedly considering leaving the initiative. This contains land routes that belong to the “New Silk Road” and sea routes that belong to the “Maritime Silk Road”. “New Silk Road” is derived from the world-famous Silk Road – an ancient trade route that extended to Europe.

China is investing in transport routes worldwide

The ruling communist party is investing in transport routes in Africa, Asia and South America, building railways and roads or buying ports such as the one in Piraeus, Greece. According to state news agency Xinhua, China will have signed more than 200 Belt and Road cooperation agreements with more than 150 countries by 2023. According to official figures from Beijing, China has invested almost a trillion US dollars in projects worldwide in the past ten years.

More than 4,000 delegates from over 140 countries and more than 30 international organizations were expected at the third summit, which last took place in 2019 before the corona pandemic. The forum’s topics include connectivity, green development and the digital economy. For Beijing, the “New Silk Road” is a new direction in foreign policy.

Beijing usually sends its own companies to the construction projects and acts as a lender. That is why there is criticism that financially weak countries are becoming very dependent on the “New Silk Road” because they will then be in debt to China. One case is the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka, which is in debt to China for the equivalent of more than 20 billion euros and became insolvent due to an economic crisis.

Before the summit began, Xinhua commented that the “doomsayers” in the West were trying to badmouth the initiative with claims that it was a “debt trap.” “No member country has fallen into a debt crisis as a result of the New Silk Road,” it said. The “People’s Daily”, a mouthpiece of the Communist Party, pointed out that many countries are using the initiative to overcome long-standing infrastructure bottlenecks.

In the West, however, observers suspect that Xi’s heartfelt project is in trouble because the country’s economy, which has around 1.4 billion inhabitants, is weakening and Beijing therefore has less money to lend. In addition, the government has to get the money back from outstanding loans from other countries.