• Beijing and Budapest have reportedly finalized the details of an extradition treaty that reflects Beijing’s growing involvement in Hungary’s internal security.
• The new treaty comes as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has begun investing heavily in various sectors of the Hungarian economy. It builds on the presence of “illegal Chinese police stations” in Hungary and an agreement that allows PRC police to patrol jointly with Hungarian law enforcement.
• Beijing is implementing a strategy similar to that seen in the Balkans and elsewhere and will likely use the foothold in Hungary to monitor citizens abroad and hunt down dissidents.
• Beijing has used a global network of spies and political pressure to target and hunt down dissidents—especially those of the Uyghur and Tibetan diasporas—and represents the PRC’s willingness to violate international law and other countries’ domestic laws for political ends.

[…]

Beijing’s wider strategy focuses heavily on increased security cooperation with potential partners in Europe. Official reasoning suggests the need to secure routes for prospective One Belt One Road (OBOR) projects and combat transnational crime (China Daily, February 18, 2024). The wide scope of past agreements, secretive negotiations, and the growing presence of overseas “police stations,” however, point to the likelihood of more nefarious purposes—namely, monitoring citizens abroad and hunting down dissidents (see China Brief, June 12, 2024; Jamestown Perspective, March 31).

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been accommodating of Beijing’s efforts. In February 2024, he welcomed PRC Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong to a private meeting in Budapest. During the joint press conference that followed, Orbán declared, “Respect is increasingly diminishing in international diplomacy, but it has always remained between Hungary and China, and we will build our further cooperation on this long-standing friendship” (Government of Hungary; Telex, February 16, 2024). Wang stated that Hungary and the PRC were “setting an example of building a new type of international relations.” He voiced his hope that the two governments would “deepen cooperation in … counter-terrorism, combating transnational crimes, [and] security and law enforcement capacity building” for OBOR projects, specifically mentioning the Budapest-Belgrade railway (State Council of the People’s Republic of China; China Daily, February 18, 2024; Telex, December 9, 2024).

[…]