China’s President Xi arrives in Hungary on next leg of Europe tour | BBC News

China’s President Xi arrives in Hungary on next leg of Europe tour | BBC News

the Chinese president Xi Jinping is starting the first official engagements of his two-day visit to Hungary today he’ll be meeting the Hungarian president and prime minister Chinese investment in the country is soaring and president XI is expected to visit some of the main sites of new factories well let’s go live to budapes now to speak to our correspondent there Nick Thorp so Nick this is bringing to an end his European tour tell us more about his agenda today yes well he will be meeting as you say the Prime Minister Victor Orban the new president of Hungary Thomas shuo up here on the Castle Hill just above where I’m standing um there’ll also be some kind of military display for them we don’t know yet which of the factories or the planned factories they’ll be visiting but there are as you say a lot of them $16 billion do worth of investment Chinese investment in Hungary ongoing this year so are very big plans um not sure yet which of those places he’ll go to when he was welcomed here yesterday at the airport the Prime Minister and his wife went out so the hungarians bending over backwards to make them very welcome here and it is pretty astonishing really that this small country 9.7 million people has really managed to attract on one of just three uh Nations that he visits here in Europe the president the leader of a country of 1.4 billion so it’s a sort of Hungarian success story I think that’ll be on a lot of people’s minds today yeah very much so and you know on the east side of Europe for president Chi you can understand why this is a strategic move on their part to invest heavily in Hungary where it can get access to Europe that’s right yes um obviously Hungary as a sort of C East but also Central Europe it’s a very well placed to supply because obviously the Hungarian Market is not very large but from here those Chinese car factories planned or rumored uh will be able to supply the German car market there’s also four or five large car manufacturers German um Japanese others here in Hungary already so very much a strategic move I think one of the concerns on that um is perhaps it’s also a Gamble from the Hungarian prime minister perhaps to overs Supply the European market obviously China has a lot of trouble at the moment with the potential of tariffs import tariffs bringing Vehicles into Europe sort of log jams at different ports of Europe from the Chinese point of view if they can manufacture the all those cars or the batteries for them here in Europe they can dodge any existing tariffs or any tariffs that might be import tariffs that might be threatened in the future Sally okay well we will keep a close eye Nick for now thank you very much Nick Thorp there in Budapest

The Chinese President Xi Jinping is starting his first official engagements of his two-day visit to Hungary.

He will be meeting the Hungarian President and Prime Minister.

The war in Ukraine and infrastructure projects are high on the agenda during his meeting with PM Viktor Orban on Thursday.

Chinese investment in the country is soaring an President Xi is expected to visit some of the main sites of new factories.

Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog

For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news

#PresidentXi #China #Hungary #BBCNews