Hungary: Budapest control
Also: the EU, migration, China, Taiwan, Antarctica, and Thailand.
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HUNGARY. Budapest control
Orban opens a new front with Europe.
Beijing has offered Budapest security support, official mouthpiece Xinhua said Sunday. Sweden’s prime minister said Monday he looked forward to meeting Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban on Sweden becoming a member of NATO.
INTELLIGENCE. Having backed down on the EU’s €50 billion package to Ukraine, Orban wants to build his leverage ahead of a parliamentary vote this month over Sweden’s membership of NATO. Budapest is ultimately expected to grant Stockholm’s wish, so the news of Chinese security assistance comes as a fresh challenge to Brussels, which is still withholding billions in funds on justice concerns. Hungary will take over the EU’s rotating presidency in July.
FOR BUSINESS. Orban also wants to show his supporters that he won’t back down from his brand of nationalist conservatism and ‘illiberal democracy’. Orban suffered a rare setback this month when President Katalin Novak was forced to resign over the controversial pardoning of an official who covered up sexual abuse at a state-run orphanage. Hungary's economic recovery has meanwhile stalled, dragged down by industrial declines due to a slowing Germany.
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EUROPE. MIGRATION. Against the wall
The politics of asylum give another boost to the right.
Poland said Friday it would bolster its borders amid concern on EU asylum laws. Italian media Sunday published a court ruling that migrants departing Libya could not be returned. The UK and EU agreed to formalise an illegal migration deal.
INTELLIGENCE. Domestic and EU laws are confounding centrist governments dealing with rising irregular migration from Africa and beyond. And with fundamental laws unable to be changed without large majorities, voters are getting restless. A survey prepared for the Munich Security Conference showed migration overtaking Russia in European concerns. Germany’s far-right AfD saw a drop to 19% in recent polls, but the ongoing crisis may support a rebound.
FOR BUSINESS. Several establishment figures have sensed the mood. Ex-EU border agency boss Fabrice Leggeri said Sunday he would run in European Parliament elections for Marine Le Pen's National Rally. Former German spy chief Hans-Georg Maassen has established a new party from CDU faction Werteunion. The right is also gaining in Portugal, which holds elections in March, and Spain, where the People's Party won a majority in Galicia on Sunday.
CHINA. TAIWAN. Fishing expedition
A coastguard accident will test Taipei’s restraint.
A Taiwanese tourist ferry was forcibly boarded by Chinese officials Monday. Beijing said Sunday it would set up patrols off the Kinmen islands following the deaths of two Chinese fishermen who had been chased by Taiwanese coastguards.
INTELLIGENCE. Petty provocation is par for the course in the Taiwan Strait and few observers seriously predict a near-term crisis that leads to Taiwan’s invasion. Yet of the scenarios war-gamed by regional militaries, a provocation around the Kinmen archipelago, leading to their occupation, is perhaps the most plausible casus belli. The islands, just 10km east of Xiamen, were the focus of the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis and were under military control until 1994.
FOR BUSINESS. Today the Kinmens are best known as an attraction for mainland tourists and a safe seat for the China-friendly Kuomintang. With the KMT dominating Taiwan’s legislature, Taipei will avoid exacerbating tensions, but Beijing will probe for red lines (as it is with surveillance flights and weather balloons). The risks of conflict remain low, but above zero, which is where the buoyant shares of Taiwan-linked semiconductor firms seem to be pricing it.
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CHINA. ANTARCTICA. Tip of the iceberg
A research station causes ripples.
US and Australian analysts have raised concerns over a recently opened Chinese research base near the Ross Ice Shelf. Qinling Station is China's third all-year Antarctic facility. It was last year expected to house a satellite ground station.
INTELLIGENCE. There are no open-source indicators that a ground station on Qinling yet exists. Yet the potential for dual use cannot be ruled out, particularly as China’s military satellite network lacks facilities in the Southern Hemisphere, beyond a set of reported sites in Bolivia and Argentina. An equatorial location at Tarawa in the Pacific was shut down in 2003. Production recently began for China's second low earth orbit communications constellation.
FOR BUSINESS. Under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System, states are confined to scientific purposes. Yet military (and commercial) activities may come into scope from 2048, the period from which the Treaty's 1998 Environmental Protocol can be reviewed. Some are already acting as if this has happened. In September, Iran said it would establish a naval base there. Unregulated fishing is increasing. Russia conducted offshore seismic oil and gas surveys in 2020.
THAILAND. Little to smile about
Bangkok faces familiar challenges.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin called again for rate cuts Monday after quarterly GDP data showed a 0.6% contraction. Officials arrested 27 Myanmar refugees Friday, part of an expected exodus following Nyapyidaw's conscription drive.
INTELLIGENCE. Some 45,000 refugees have already reached Thailand since Myanmar's 2021 coup and the beginning of its civil war, but this is a fraction of the levels in the 1990s when Thailand's military supported the proxy Karen conflict in Myanmar's east. This arrangement ended with Thailand’s ‘People’s Constitution’ of 1997 and the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra. Subsequent coups saw him exiled, then jailed, but on Sunday, frail and 74, he was finally free.
FOR BUSINESS.With his now military-aligned party under Srettha at the helm, Thaksin has been released (subject to an outstanding lèse-majesté charge), but the problems of Bangkok’s army-led capitalism live on. Growth is uneven. Visa-free travel for Chinese citizens has led to a surge in tourism (and transit flights to US border staging posts), but average spending is down. Thailand's finance ministry on Tuesday announced its first overseas bond in two decades.
The importance of domestic turmoil within Hungary shouldn’t be underestimated: the govt-controlled media has failed to grasp control of the narrative and there was a massive protest last Friday. Even within the core right voters, this issue remains poignant, and for those in opposition, it’s a new display of hypocrisy in the government’s war against minorities in the name of ‘protecting children’.