Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) meets with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. (source: TASR/AP)
We almost rolled on the floor when over the All Souls' weekend we heard that Slovakia, with a population the size of a larger Chinese village, is some sort of new strategic partner of China. Chinese overseas policemen and members of the Chinese intelligence services, residing in a shabby building near the Ondrejský Cintorín cemetery, beat up Slovak citizens with the assistance of the Slovak police on Slovak territory. It should be funny, but it isn't.
The prime minister offered himself
Anyone who knows the Budapest of today knows what a European city and country looks like when enthralled by Chinese investment and strategic capital. There are as many neon-lit signs written in Chinese as in Hungarian. China also has its first European prime minister, who touts himself as a protector of European civilization. There are limits to this, apparently.
While refugees are kept behind barbed wire on the Serbian border, Chinese white-collar workers are buying up energy companies, businesses, factories, roads, villages and Hungarians are buying everything offered by Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has the mentality of a late 1980s racketeer from Győr where Slovak families used to go to buy fake jeans and fake Nutella.
Orbán's strategic partnership with China ended like the Battle of Mohács (a battle fought in 1526 between the Kingdom of Hungary against the Ottoman Empire, resulting the latter's victory and the kingdom's territories split into parts - Ed. note). Now, those who survived escaped and the rest serve the new form of silk road capitalism. Just like Slovaks went shopping to Győr, the Chinese visited Orbán; however they may have found someone better. The Slovak prime minister went to offer himself; and it's quite strange because no matter how we look back to the period before the 2023 election, there was no talk of selling Slovakia to communist China at pre-election speeches and meetings, and we probably know why.
