Hungarian-Chinese financial relations
In parallel with the continuous development of the relations in real economy, Hungarian-Chinese financial cooperation has also been growing steadily since the early 2000s. The Hungarian and Chinese financial authorities reached a series of agreements to keep the cooperation and the operation of market participants from the two countries within a prudential framework, thus ensuring the cooperation is secure and mutually beneficial for both sides.
As part of the country's "Opening to the East" policy, Hungary was the first country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been playing an active role in the financial integration section of the BRI, which is one of its four sections. In the working group, Hungary actively promotes the position of Hungary as a regional financial center, and welcomes commercial banks to explore the possibilities of opening branches or establishing subsidiaries. As a result, several Chinese banks are now present in our country.
Hungary is the only country that has implemented successful bond issuances in both off-shore and on-shore bond markets, and in 2021, Hungary became the first sovereign issuer to successfully sell green panda bonds in the world's second largest bond market.
In the meantime – with the supportive Chinese contribution– several Central and Eastern European equity funds have also been launched into our region, and benefited the undercapitalized Hungarian enterprises.
In addition to the continuously developing bilateral financial relations with China, Hungary also nurtures and develops multilateral relations. As part of the ”Opening to the East” policy and in order to help improving the infrastructure in less developed Asian countries, Hungary joined, in its first round of expansion the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in June 2017, as the 56th member state. AIIB is one of the world’s largest multilateral development banks, and its fundamental objective is to provide long-term financing for infrastructure development needs in the Asia-Pacific region. AIIB is also the first Chinese financial initiative whose membership is open to any country in the world. As a founding member Hungary also joined the Multilateral Development Finance Cooperation Centre (MCDF) in May 2020 to support infrastructure investments.
