Greg Hinds

The Liberals will soon be only the Party of Montreal.

Steve Bannon says if CNN doesn't apologize today to Trump's spokesperson after she tried to use her time on the network to attack Jake Tapper, Trump should cancel the debate.

China’s grand vision of the world-changing BRI may have not been realised, but something else is emerging in its wake — a powerful lever to bend authoritarian-leaning countries toward Chinese interests. Hungary was the first European country to sign on to China’s trillion-euro Belt and Road Initiative. With Italy leaving the Belt and Road, or BRI, last year, and others in Europe expressing concern about engagement with China, Budapest may also soon be one of the last remaining links of the BRI to Europe. By all appearances, the BRI is in retreat, with Chinese infrastructure spending down around the world as Beijing deals with a troubling track record of BRI corruption, waste, debt distress, and failing projects. But as the infrastructure and ambitions for the BRI fade, something more dangerous may be rising up to take its place — an authoritarian alliance of security, surveillance, and repression that puts Europe at risk. Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Angola have all purchased AI-powered surveillance and facial recognition technology from China — presumably to track or intimidate political opponents. Of 90 countries that could be categorised on a spectrum from “closed authoritarian" to "flawed democracies,” China had sold its surveillance tech to 54 of them — often under the banner of the BRI. Hungary, a member of both the European Union and NATO that has been sliding deeper into authoritarianism over the past decade, is a perfect target for Beijing's security-based BRI aspirations — the export of political repression with Chinese characteristics. Viktor Orban’s right-wing nationalist government seems an odd match for Communist China, but they share a commitment to what Orban has himself described as an intentionally “illiberal state”. Furthering their mutual interest in preventing domestic dissent, Beijing announced new bilateral cooperation between China and Hungary on “security and law enforcement capacity building under the Belt and Road Initiative”. As the US and its allies have awoken to the risk of overreliance on Chinese supply lines, Hungarian officials are taking the opposite approach, going so far as to call de-risking suicidal. This position, however, doesn’t impact Hungary alone. The entire EU market is open to Chinese manipulations through the Hungarian economy, such as dumping of cheap goods to prop up the failing Chinese economy or undermining domestic European industries with subsidised competitors. As German chemical giant BASF seeks to disengage from China’s Xinjiang region, leaked documents indicate that China is planning to build a chemical hub in Hungary. China’s grand vision of the world-changing BRI may have not been realised, but something else is emerging in its wake — a powerful lever to bend authoritarian-leaning countries toward Chinese interests. For Hungary, this is detrimental to its citizens, its neighbours, and Europe as a whole. This is the view of Elaine Dezenski, the senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC. 1/6 Next 👉 Hungarian History of corruption - the BRI Loan Scam