America’s Right Got Hungary’s Viktor Orbán Wrong

We overlooked his government’s conscious coupling with the Chinese Communist Party.

Some American conservatives thought that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had found a way to unopen the Pandora’s box of wokeism. We got it wrong. We overlooked his government’s conscious coupling with the Chinese Communist Party. China has been acquiring strategic infrastructure—air- and seaports, green-energy and telecommunications facilities—and establishing secret police stations in Europe. Most consequentially, it has cultivated an all-weather strategic partnership with Hungary, a veto-wielding member of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Since joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Budapest has pursued large-scale manufacturing collaborations with Chinese electric-vehicle companies. Mr. Orbán has also expanded Huawei’s cyber footprint, even though the telecommunications giant has been linked to intellectual property theft, espionage and cyberattacks for the Communist Party.

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