3rd June: Budapest’s mayor announced on Wednesday that streets in the Hungarian capital will be renamed in protest of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government’s intentions to build a Chinese institution there, which he described as an “unwanted” initiative. The new street names are all about China’s alleged human rights violations.
Free Hong Kong Road and Dalai Lama Street are two of the four new street signs. They’re all in an area where Fudan University is planning to build a new campus, which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s administration supports. Mr. Orban’s critics are increasingly concerned about his ties to countries such as Russia, China, and Belarus, as well as his restrictions on media independence and higher education.
Fudan University is a famous educational institution in China. The Budapest campus, which is slated to be completed by 2024, will be the company’s first in the European Union. Gergely Karacsony, a liberal mayor, has expressed worry over “Chinese influence-buying” in Hungary. “We’re still hoping the project won’t go forward, but if it does, these names will have to be adopted,” Mr. Karacsony said at a press conference. Mr. Karacsony added that “many of the ideals that Hungary committed itself to 30 years ago” at the fall of Communism would be called into question by the Fudan project.
Direkt36, the Hungarian research journalism organization, has documented building costs estimated at around $1.8 billion (£1.2 billion). This is more than the government of Orban spent in 2019 on its whole system of higher education. The documents indicate that a loan from a Chinese bank provides almost $1.5 billion in costs. According to the Republikon Institute, a liberal think organization, about two-thirds of Hungarians do not favor the Chinese university. “We don’t want the elite and private Fudan university here at the expense of Hungarian taxpayers,” said Karacsony.
The government claims that establishing a distinguished outpost of Fudan University, which is placed 100th in the Shanghai Ranking, will allow thousands of Hungarian, Chinese, and other international students to obtain high-quality certificates. It would also be consistent with previously agreed-upon plans to construct a “Student City” dormitory project for thousands of primarily Hungarian students on the site, according to Karacsony, but the Fudan campus will take up the most of that project’s space.
Fudan is the latest milestone in Orban’s “Eastern Opening” foreign strategy, which many see as a geopolitical balancing act. Critics see the nationalist leader as a “Trojan horse” for China and Russia within the European Union and NATO.
Karacsony last month said that he would conduct a primary election to choose Orban’s Challenger for the general election in 2022, organized by the alliance of six opposition parties. Polls indicate that the opposition alliances have a narrow lead over the right-wing party of Orbans, Fidesz and that Karacsony has the most chances of winning the primary in September.
Image Courtesy: BBC and freemalaysiatoday