Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán landed in Beijing, China, for a surprise trip on Monday, meeting with genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping to encourage China to pressure Ukraine and Russia to cease hostilities.
Orbán described China has wielded “decisive influence” in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and praised the Communist Party for allegedly being “the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace from the beginning.” Orbán, according to the Chinese state’s Xinhua News Agency, also thanked China for growing economic ties with Hungary and promised to use his current position as president of the Council of the European Union to “actively promote” diplomacy with China.
Beijing is the third stop on Orbán’s international tour, which began last week following Hungary obtaining the six-month presidency of the E.U. council. The prime minister first visited Kyiv, Ukraine, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky for a tense exchange in which the two acknowledged bilateral disagreements but committed to dialogue. He then flew to Moscow, meeting with strongman Vladimir Putin to allegedly help negotiate an end to the Ukraine invasion.
In Beijing, Orbán “briefed Xi on his recent visits to Ukraine and Russia,” Xinhua reported, and celebrated “China’s role and influence” in the world.
“In the face of the current turbulent international situation, China not only loves peace but has also put forward a series of constructive and important initiatives,” Xinhua paraphrased Orbán as saying, “proving with its own concrete actions that China is an important stabilizing force for world peace.”
“Hungary is willing to take the rotating EU presidency as an opportunity to actively promote the sound development of EU-China relations,” Orbán said, according to Xinhua. “He added that Hungary highly appreciates and values China’s role and influence and is willing to maintain close strategic communication and coordination with China.”
Orbán’s official social media account published a video summarizing his visit to China in which he described his visit as being in line with his “peace mission” to end active hostilities in Ukraine.
“Of course, the warring parties have the last word in the war, but three world powers have a decisive influence: China, the United States, and the European Union,” Orbán said, potentially hinting a visit to America as part of the “peace mission. “They also influence when this war will end.”
“After my meeting with the warring parties, that is why I have come here to Beijing,” Orbán explained.
The Hungarian prime minister claimed that he spoke to Xi and senior Chinese Communist Party leaders about the “Chinese peace plan” in Ukraine – a vague and largely ignored set of imperatives for Russia and Ukraine that includes such wisdom as calling for both sides to “calm down as soon as possible” – and celebrated Beijing as a peacemaking state.
“We discussed the Chinese peace plan with President Xi. China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace from the beginning,” Orbán said:
President Xi made it clear to me today that #China will continue its efforts aimed at creating the conditions for #peace. We are not alone!
Peace mission to be continued… pic.twitter.com/TNz1GcwIgB— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) July 8, 2024
Xi reportedly commended Orbán efforts and called for an “early ceasefire” in Ukraine.
“China has been actively promoting peace talks in its own way and encouraging and supporting all efforts conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis,” Xi claimed, favorably comparing China’s approach to the conflict with Hungary’s.
Xinhua reported that Xi also discussed the relationship between China and Hungary directly.
“Xi said that the two countries should maintain high-level exchanges, deepen political mutual trust, strengthen strategic communication and coordination, continue to firmly support each other,” Xinhua reported, “strengthen practical cooperation in various fields, advance high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and continue to enrich the bilateral all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for a new era to better benefit the people.”
Hungary is one of the most active members of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the world. The BRI is a Chinese debt trap plan in which Beijing offers predatory loans to impoverished nations to be used to pay for cost-prohibitive infrastructure projects. The countries take out loans owed to China and use them to pay Chinese companies to build the projects. When they inevitably fail to make their payments, the Chinese government uses that leverage to erode their sovereignty, demanding geopolitical loyalty or seizing land, sometimes both.
Xi and Orbán most recently met in May, when the Chinese dictator conducted a European tour that stopped in Budapest. There, the two leaders signed 18 cooperation agreements, many of them tied to the BRI. Among the agreements were deals for enhancing “green development” and “promoting supply chain cooperation.” Orbán effusively praised Xi during the encounter, even thanking China, the origin nation of the Wuhan coronavirus, for saving “the lives of many Hungarians” by offering Chinese-made vaccine products that some of China’s top scientists have criticized as being low quality. Xi, in turn, thanked Orbán for defending China – a murderous communist state – on “human rights.”
Orbán’s current “peace mission” began in Kyiv, where he reportedly urged President Zelensky to return to the negotiating table with Russia.
“The ways of international diplomacy are slow and complicated,” Orbán said, according to the Hungarian government. “I put it to the president that we should consider whether the order may be reversed by speeding up peace talks with a quick ceasefire.”
Orbán told Zelensky he would “try to put the disputes of the past behind us and focus on the period ahead.”
Zelensky thanked Orbán for the visit and celebrated “good progress” between the two states but reportedly rejected the call to return to talks with Putin.
In Moscow, Putin welcomed Orbán warmly, though he issued a modest complaint about the “serious decline” in bilateral trade fueled by Orbán’s ties to China.
“I am very grateful to you for agreeing to see me even in such a difficult situation,” Orbán told Putin. “I must tell you that the number of countries that can talk to both sides of this conflict is rapidly declining. Hungary will probably be the only country in Europe soon that will be able to talk to all parties.”
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