Chinese President Xi Jinping's visiting Hungary is of historic importance and the summit has yielded results matching the occasion, commented Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto after the Chinese leader wound up his two-day trip to Budapest on May 10.

China and Hungary elevated ties to a comprehensive "all-weather" strategic partnership, a category in which the Chinese include only five countries, Hungary being the only one from Europe, he added.

The two sides expanded an earlier list of joint projects under the Belt and Road Initiative aimed at developing East-West connections. These cover rail development, electromobility, telecommunications, energy and nuclear energy, and farming, but also enhancing cultural ties and cooperation in the film industry.

The most important ones include infrastructural projects such as the V0 rail project, a railway bypass around the capital to facilitate the transport of goods from the eastern part of Hungary to the West, a high-speed rail link between central Budapest and Liszt Ferenc Airport, and the installation of charging stations promoting electromobility.

Hungary is at the forefront of a technological revolution and Chinese companies that play a leading role in the sector consider the country a location not only for production but also for R&D, according to Hungary’s top diplomat.

The complete list of 18 cooperation agreements was disclosed by a liberal opposition MP, who called it a disgrace that Hungarians had to learn these from the Chinese press.

The Hungarian side is looking forward to further cooperation with China in the fields of foreign trade, capital investment, infrastructure, logistics, artificial intelligence, and new energy, among others, Economy Minister Marton Nagy said on Friday after Hungary’s ICT 4iG signed an MoU the local unit of China's Huawei on the establishment of a joint cloud services platform.

The parties also agreed on the possibility of establishing joint innovation centrse for the research, development and application of artificial intelligence.

Chinese investments in manufacturing, electric car and battery production and IT here were breaking records, and this was underpinned by similar unprecedented levels of financing, he added.

Huawei Technologies CEO Gao Weijie said the "fair, transparent, objective and friendly" market environment in Hungary motivated Huawei to increase its local investments continuously.

Hungary has shrugged off security concerns of Chinese telecommunication companies operating in the country.  During the Trump administration. Washington had warned Budapest and other EU countries of the risks. The Chinese leader praised the Hungarian prime minister for his independent foreign policy and his defiance of great power politics.

The Hungarian premier called Xi one of the strongest leaders in the world in an exclusive 30-minute interview with Chinese state media CCTV. The world's centre of power is changing, and although transatlantic cooperation has long had an undisputed supremacy, in the past 20 years this has been changing, he argued.

The question is how the Western world views those actors who are challenging this old centre of power. Orban noted that improving trade relations between China and the European Union will be one of his tasks during his six-month EU presidency.

"Cooperation and relations are always better than isolation and disunity," Orban explained, adding that Chinese companies and investors were planning to expand in Hungary:

Hungary sees China's emergence as an economic powerhouse as an opportunity, not a threat, Balazs Orban, the political director of Viktor Orban (namesake of the PM) told Xinhua, calling the visit a new peak in bilateral relations, regarded as a "crown jewel".

As the first EU country to participate in the BRI, Hungary has forged a deep and fruitful partnership with China in investment, trade, green development and technological innovation. He cautioned that there is a growing trend of decoupling from some Western countries, noting that such actions are not in line with the interests of the Hungarian people.

Sino-Hungarian relations have blossomed over the past decade, marked by a significant increase in political and economic cooperation. This has coincided with the government's "Eastern Opening" strategy, launched around 2013, aimed at diversifying its trade partnerships by looking eastward. This opened doors for China's growing economic clout in the region.

China is Hungary's largest trading partner outside the EU. The country attracted a record €13bn FDI last year, of which €8bn were from China. According to earlier reports, bilateral trade had risen around 4-fold in 20 years to $12bn last year and there are HUF6.4 trillion (€16.5bn) of Chinese investments underway in Hungary.

Hungary's primary appeal to China lies in its position as a member of the European Union, making it an attractive manufacturing hub for Chinese companies looking to bypass the bloc's import tariffs.

On Friday, Xi Jinping and Viktor Orban visited the HQ of the oil company MOL, housed in a 143-metre skyscraper, where the Hungarian prime minister shared a photo jesting about the "unparalleled summits" reached by Sino-Hungarian relations.