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  Christian Bowie

  Central and Eastern Europe Correspondent

In the Hungarian countryside, a massive construction project looms amidst fields of full wheat. What’s striking is that there are several Chinese migrant workers milling around the construction site. They work at a Chinese factory where the first batteries for electric cars are due to roll off the production line within a year. The plant, outside the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, will become Europe’s largest battery factory.

The project signals the warm relations between Beijing and Budapest. Prime Minister Orban welcomes one Chinese initiative after another in the country. Hungary also wants to become the world’s largest battery producer after China.

The pro-China trajectory is raising concerns in Brussels. Commission President von der Leyen wants EU countries to become less dependent on China.

Urban’s path also angers residents of the under-construction plant. Farmer Judit, 50, and her son Laszlo, 30, look dejected across the fields at the construction site less than a kilometre away. “I grew up here, my children grew up here,” says Judit. “We know better than anyone what it was like here.”

Laszlo dreamed of expanding the farm and taking over the surrounding fields. “Now I just want to leave,” he says. “I can’t bear it.”

The family owns an organic farm where they grow small-scale crops and raise chickens. They fear the factory will cause pollution and lead to electricity and water shortages for local residents once production begins.

They see not only how the landscape is changing rapidly, but also the street scene in the village near the Mikepércs factory. “The residents are worried because more and more Chinese are coming to live in the area,” says Judit. “In other words, they are taking up more and more space. Not only our farmland here, but also the houses.”

The fields around Mikepércs have been used for industry for some time. There are several battery factories and electric car plants, also built by parties from South Korea and Japan.

But the most important investor for Hungary is convincingly China. Hungary has become Beijing’s investment country within the European Union. In recent years, the country has received a total of more than 16 billion euros in Chinese investment.

For example, there will be a new factory in southern Hungary for BYD, the Chinese electric carmaker being investigated by the European Commission. Work has also been underway for years on a railway line, mainly financed by China, through Hungary, across the Balkans to Greece.

It was therefore not at all unexpected that Xi Jinping would also visit Hungary during his visit to Europe in May. The Chinese president described the relationship with Budapest as “smooth and rich like Tokaj wine,” referring to the famous Hungarian wine.

An additional problem for Brussels now is the fact that Hungary holds the EU presidency from this month until the end of the year. Prime Minister Orbán immediately demonstrated that he would take a different course in foreign policy. In the first weeks he visited Kiev, Moscow and Beijing to talk about a “peace mission” in Ukraine. In the United States he visited former President Trump.

CATL, the company behind the Mikepércs project and China’s largest battery manufacturer, acknowledges that warm diplomatic relations between Hungary and China played a role in the decision to build the plant there. But CATL also insists that the chosen location was a logical choice.

“Hungary is located in the heart of Europe and has a long history of car production,” said a NOS spokesman. There will be no pollution, which, according to the company, has already been proven in other construction projects such as in Germany.

At the end of the working day in Mikipercs it becomes clear that China has settled in Hungary. Chinese workers go home or travel in small trucks to their accommodation. A few Chinese men go to the local butcher to buy pork.

A Hungarian woman standing in line at the store worries about what the pro-China trend means for her country. “I don’t think it’s a healthy trend,” she says. “I want to stay connected to Western Europe and therefore follow the democratic trend.” But she is particularly concerned about pollution from the factory, because she has two children. “The factory is two kilometres from their school. They wouldn’t allow that in China, would they?”