Photo: Facebook/Orbán Viktor
Eric Hendriks
28/02/2025 06:00
Some observers rationalise that Orbán and Trump get along so well because they are both national conservatives, whereas Hungary-China ties must be all about economics. Yet, that is false. Shared ideas about the changing world order are important in the relationship between Budapest and Beijing—and they can play that role also because some of the most fundamental ideas about the political world common to national conservatives in Hungary and the US are espoused by China’s political and academic elites, too.
Despite and through their antagonism, Xi’s China and Trump’s America awaken a world of multipolarity and neo-Romantic national particularisms, the order of which grounds in sovereignty. Hence, instead of being caught in a balancing act, Hungarian foreign policy stands firmly in the middle of an emerging sovereigntist Zeitgeist. It is avant-garde, not adrift.
So, what constitutes our times’ emerging Zeitgeist? Here are three fundamental ideas about the political world that you could uncontroversially bring up in national conservative circles in Budapest and the United States, including among America first Trumpists, and among academics and politicians in China.
In a typical ‘America first’ expression, this means that America is going to stop ‘paying for everything and everyone’ and ‘fighting other people’s wars.’ The new era is when the US will again become great as a country. A similar but more theorised sense of transition imbues Orbán Viktor’s notion of a “global system change” (világrendszerváltás), which his last Tusványos address referenced 13 times in its various Hungarian grammatical inflexions. The Xi-ist eschatology, finally, is the most elaborate, revolving around concepts such as the new era, the shared future for all mankind, and the great change unseen in a hundred years.
Most striking is the conceptual proximity between the Xi-ist eschatology and Orbán’s “global system change.” Both perceive liberal Western-centrism in world affairs giving way to a multipolar and multi-civilisational constellation. China’s rise most forcefully drives that shift. The United States must abandon its exceptionalist claim to liberal-universalist ‘world ideals’ and any unipolar supremacy, rediscovering itself as a great country, i.e., as a particularity.
We are moving away from a liberal ontology that emphasises free-floating individuals and placeless, ‘culturally neutral’ institutions, preferably decentralised, supranational or international ones—and toward a sovereigntist political ontology, the central units of international politics are sovereign nation-states, which culturally cluster into larger cultural zones and civilisations. The heterogeneous particularisms of this landscape of nations, peoples, cultures, and civilisations prevent a universalistic regime model from becoming the global norm, be it Leninist or liberal.
Previously, and analogously, the Chinese Communist Party had already moved away from the universalist pretension of Leninism, particularising China’s political self-image via the notion of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义), which, in 1978, was coined as a slogan for furthering economic pragmatism, yet became the official state doctrine and umbrella concept under General Secretary Xi Jinping. The meaning of the term shifted, as the ‘Chinese characteristics’ were increasingly emphasised and came to refer to the unique, historically-grown, and substantive cultural essence of Chinese civilisation.
Great powers refrain from forcing their political systems on others out of regard for political and cultural boundaries. That same regard for boundaries incidentally makes them seek control over mass migration to their territories. Also, great powers should not pit geopolitical blocs against each other in ideological standoffs. Instead, they should embrace the lasting coexistence of distinct nations, cultures, and civilisations.
The author is a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute
This is a summary of the author’s report for the Danube Institute with the same title, which is accessible on the website of the Danube Institute.