The Duran Podcast
Multipolar Europe. Xi Jinping meets Vucic and Orban
All right, Alexandra, let's talk about Xi Jinping's trip to Serbia and Hungary. And maybe we can start with his trip to Serbia. And interesting speech from Vüchitch with a huge crowd in attendance. And then we can shift to Xi's meeting in Budapest with Viktor Orban. A very interesting statement in speech from Viktor Orban. Interesting way that Vüchitch and Orban welcomed Xi Jinping when he arrived in their countries. A very, very big ceremony to welcome Xi Jinping to Serbia and then to Hungary. I think that says a lot. And an admission, a recognition that the power in the world today is China and that we are indeed in a multi-polar world. So I think that was the big message that we got not from China, but from Serbia and from Hungary. And all of this follows Blinken's trip and Yellen and Blinken's trip to Beijing where we had warnings and threats and ultimatums to China. So what are your thoughts with this trip? Well, I'm going to go against what I think is the conventional wisdom. And I'm going to say that I think that the main purpose of Xi Jinping's trip to Europe was actually to visit Serbia and Hungary. He had to go to a West European country and meet a leading EU leaders because if he'd just gone to Hungary and Serbia, it would have seemed like it was some kind of hostile move. So that's why he went to Paris. He went to Paris because he knows that Macron is a little bit flaky. He's somebody that you can talk to at other times and he can come along and agree with you so you can have a kind of civil meeting and conversation with him. Of course, he had his mind of them, Macron and his mind of them in the person of Ursula from the lion. But there we go, you're making quite sure that he didn't slip out of line. I mean, there's ludicrous performance, by the way. And there's reports that Macron now wants, is so frustrated by it that he wants to get Ursula von der Leyen removed as the EU Commission president. Well, I was going to say that. You read my life. I was going to say that. Now we know that they don't like each other. And were they thinking of Draghi, of course? Exactly. I mean, yeah. But anyway, this was just the decision being did that more, I think, for appearances than because he was really expecting to talk substantive issues with Macron. The really important part of his trip was his trips to Serbia and Hungary. And the dynamics here are completely different. And you're absolutely right. Very warm welcome, who footage very warm welcome from Orban. The Serbs and the Hungarians go out of their way at a government level to make Xi Jinping welcome in their countries. But it's not just a government level, because the most interesting thing was, especially in Serbia, thousands of people coming out to meet Xi Jinping, he's given a very warm reception at a public level as well. The Serb public, and I get the sense the Hungarian public too, are delighted and thrilled to have the Chinese president in their country very different again for what you tend to see when Xi Jinping travels now in Europe. So extremely warm visits, Xi Jinping coming, making it absolutely clear that China supports Serbia, that they have what the Chinese call an ironclad friendship. And remember this points both ways, because of course it's a client-flat ironclad friendship on Serbia's parts towards China. But it's also China showing that it has ironclad friendship towards Serbia. And in fact the Chinese media have been talking about how the two countries have always had good relations, they've had good relations throughout their histories, how China always lends a helping hand to Serbia when it's in trouble, as it did the Yugoslav war, as it did during the pandemic, as it did to periods of economic crisis. And they were very careful to say that Serbia has done the same with China, that the Serbian nation has repeatedly shown its friendship towards China, it has backed China in all kinds of conflicts that China has been involved in and of course against Taiwan, over Taiwan and other things. So a very strong relationship between China and Serbia and China being very clear that it's going to invest in Serbia, it's going to help to support Serbia's economy. Serbia not without friends, it doesn't have to tilt to the west, it doesn't have to be involved with the EU, China is there, it's a friend, it's got deep pockets, it's got all the things that Serbia needs to prosper. And that's the message that Xi Jinping was coming with. And he's made exactly the same message in Hungary, you go to the Chinese media again, there again, talking about the friendship between Hungary and China, they are interestingly enough, careful to mention that the political orientations of the two governments are completely different. Xi Jinping as we forget is a communist, he's the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, Viktor Orban as we know is a very strong anti-communist political discipline during the period of a communist rule in Hungary. And yet despite that the two leaders Orban and Xi like each other, they get home, they work together well, China are also interested in investing heavily in Hungary and the two leaders announce a strategic partnership. And we've come to understand what strategic partnerships mean, they're not quite alliances, but they're a lot more than just being friendly relations. China already has a strategic partnership with Serbia, now Hungary as well, it's becoming clear, exactly as you said, that these two countries are now entering the multipolar system, they're starting to distance themselves from the EU and NATO centre, Hungary of course is still an EU and NATO state, you Serbia is not, but the drift is clear. And all of this preparatory to the next big meeting that Xi Jinping is going to have, which is with Putin and Moscow. Yeah, Orban said, now we are living in a multipolar world order. And one of the pillars of this new world order is the People's Republic of China, the country that is now setting the course of the world economy and world politics. And he said that with Xi Jinping standing right next to me. My question to you is that Orban and Vouchich, both of the leaders, whatever you may think of them, they are definitely not dumb. They're very, very smart, very clever leaders, very capable leaders. They would not be having this meeting with China, they would not be making these types of statements. Orban, who's in the European Union in NATO, would definitely not be making this type of statement. If Project Ukraine was not working in Russia's favour, if the multipolar world was collapsing, if BRICS was collapsing, obviously things are moving in the other direction and Vouchich knows it and Orban definitely knows it. Absolutely. You're absolutely correct. What is now happening in effect is the Chinese influence, the influence of the BRICS, is starting to extend into Europe itself. Before long, Serb's Serbia will actually, I suspect, be faced with a choice, either continuing with year of integration, which I think is becoming less and less popular in Serbia, or perhaps even considering membership of the BRICS, just saying. Now with Hungary it's more complicated because Orban has inherited a structure whereby Hungary is already a member of both NATO and the EU, but we've seen now how uncomfortable this whole relationship is. Well, here we have a leader of a NATO-EU country talking about the multipolar order, talking about the People's Republic of China as a leader in it. This is not going to be welcome La Hangguich in Brussels or in Washington especially, but Orban is prepared to do it. And as you write, he said, he can see which, where the sun is rising and where it's certain. I mean, he understood that if he was going to make that statement, he is going to get a lot of pushback. And I'm saying that Kyby is going to get pushback from Ursula, but more importantly, from the United States and from Blinken and these types in Sullivan. I mean, they're going to be horrified reading the statements that Orban made. They're going to be absolutely furious. But China is increasingly powerful. It's increasingly confident. Its economy, by the way, is also in an outswing. I mean, all the business about the great Chinese crisis that we were hearing about, all that has melted away. Now we've been told that on the contrary, China has this enormous over-capacity. That's the real problem, but it's about to collapse, but it's in some ways too strong. So China also very self-confident. Xi Jinping also very, very self-confident. I think he's gradually come to realize, as the Chinese leadership has done, that building a relationship with the EU is a loss cause. You're just wasting your time trying it. I mean, he has to go through the motions. He doesn't want to turn up in Europe and not visit a major European capital, as I said. So he goes to Paris rather than Berlin, interestingly. But the fact is he did his real business in Belgrade and Budapest. He wants to build bridges with important European countries, which they all, by the way, and extend the multipoda system into Europe itself. Yeah, so a final question. Serbia is number one trade partners, the European Union, obviously. It's number two trade partners, China. Serbia without Hungary, I would imagine would have difficulty saying no to the European Union and going full into BRICS, but with Hungary having a strategic partnership with China and having this partner in Europe, this neighbor, also looking east. I imagine that does open the way for Serbia to tilt more towards BRICS and what may really change the dynamics of all of this is what could possibly happen with the geography in Ukraine. Absolutely. Because that could upend everything and things could be looking very beneficial for Serbia, which up until today has been completely locked in. Surrounded by the European Union. You're absolutely right. If the Hungarian-Serb relationship continues, which there's no reason to think that he won't, and if the war in Ukraine continues in its present trajectory, and there's no reason to think that's going to change either, being realistic about it, then Serbia is going to have a land bridge all the way to China. And the EU encirclement of Serbia will be broken. And that will have a huge effect, by the way. It won't just have an economic effect. It will also have a geopolitical effect. It will mean that these NATO protectors that have been created around Serbia in order to tie down Macedonia, Northern Macedonia, I should be correctly calling it, Kosovo, Bosnia. What the network? Oh, all of those. They're all of those. They're going to start to feel extremely vulnerable, because of course they will be faced with a Serbia that is not only powerful, much more powerful than they are, but now very, very well connected with trade routes and supporters. It's back. And with grievances against them, and the whole balance of power in the Balkans is going to start to shift, and shift very significantly. Yeah, I agree. I mean, all these microstates around Serbia and this area, they're going to start to ask the question, what was it all for? The purpose of splitting up was in order to create these states that would eventually surround Serbia and act as a way to get Serbia into NATO or the EU in one form or another, to make Serbia submit. That was the reason for all these microstates to begin with. But the minute you break that access to the east, you break that open. Serbia has got a pathway to the east. All these microstates become effectively useless as far as being targeted towards Serbia. They're not just useless. They become a burden on the west, because they can't function by themselves. I mean, I don't mean that they're not defendable by themselves. They're not, but economically, they can't function by themselves. Of course, Bosnia is profoundly dysfunctional and deeply divided. So, by the way, is Montenegro, as we know. There's conflicts in Macedonia, and of course Kosovo is another whole set of problems as well. So what is the west going to do, sort of trying to defend these places? It's another, it would be another massive imperial overreach that would become again another bottomless commitment of resources. Ultimately, American resources to shore up a failing status quo. All right. We will end it there. The Duran.loples.com. We are on rumble odyssey. Bitchu, Telegram, Rockfin, and TwitterX. And go to the radshop. Pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]