“China’s development will also have a determining effect on Europe’s future, and Chinese-European cooperation also contributes greatly to facilitating an increase in Europe’s competitiveness on the global market”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in an interview to the Xinhua news agency.
“Global politics and the global economy have reached a turning point and China will continue to play an important role in the upcoming period”, the Minister said, adding that China’s development will also play a major part in Europe’s continued growth “and accordingly we regard the facilitation of cooperation between China and Europe as extremely important”.
Mr. Szijjártó expressed his hope that China’s “One Belt, One Road” commercial infrastructure development initiative would soon become embodied in concrete development projects in view of the fact that Chinese investments and the export of European goods to China play a key role in forming the continent’s future, pointing out that the deficiencies of existing infrastructure mean European products are less competitive on the Chinese market than goods from other regions.
“We expect Europe to facilitate an increase in Chinese investments and would like Chinese enterprises who are thinking of expanding their European presence to think of Hungary first”, the Minister said, stressing that Hungarian-Chinese political, economic and cultural relations have never been so good and that he sees particularly good opportunities for cooperation within the fields of the automobile industry and the export of Hungarian foods to China.
With regard to the Budapest-Belgrade railway project, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade declared that it conforms to EU regulation in all respects.
The Belt and Road Initiative commercial infrastructure development programme launched by China in 2013 is made up of two parts, the Silk Road Economic Belt Programme and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Programme. The Initiative encompasses regions that include sixty percent of the world population and one third of global production. More than forty countries and international organisations have already joined the programmes, and a further 20 countries and 20 organisations are expected to join in the coming months.
China has spent over 50 billion dollars on commercial development projects since 2013 in countries that have joined the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese enterprises have created over 180 thousand jobs in the 56 commercial zones established within this framework, and have contributed some 1.1 billion dollars to the tax revenues of host countries. In 2016, trade volume between China and the countries that have joined the Belt and Road Initiative was some 6.3 trillion Yuan (913 billion dollars).