Hungarian opposition candidate vows full review of Orban’s close ties with China

The challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s stranglehold on power has vowed to shake up Budapest’s close ties with Beijing if he wins next year’s election.

Peter Marki-Zay, a unity candidate picked from a coalition of opposition parties, said he would “revisit and review everything” – from infrastructure loans from Chinese policy banks and a planned Chinese university campus in Budapest, to the use and potential manufacture of Chinese vaccines in Hungary.

He also pledged to “definitely” stop using a Hungarian veto at the European Union to block Brussels’ efforts to censure China.

Budapest was the only one of 27 EU member states to withhold support for punitive measures in response to Beijing imposing a national security law on Hong Kong, and its reform of the city’s electoral system.