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Hungary Welcomes EU’s First Chinese University Campus
Three years ago, the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban forced the well-regarded Central European University out of Budapest, largely because of who funded it — Hungarian-born American financier and philanthropist George Soros, long a target of populist conspiracy theories and a critic of Orban's championing of “illiberal democracy.”
Now the Hungarian government is pressing ahead with plans to host the first Chinese university campus in the European Union, underscoring Orban’s determination to continue to seek closer ties with Beijing, despite rising U.S. and Western anxiety about China’s deepening influence over parts of Central Europe.
An initial agreement was signed last month for Fudan University, based in Shanghai, to expand to the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Now Orban’s government has said it intends to help financially support the planned campus, which is scheduled to open in 2024, when it will greet around 6,000 students. The Fudan campus will offer degrees in economics and international relations as well medical and technical sciences, and Hungarian officials say they hope the campus will end up boosting Chinese investment in the country.
The welcoming of Fudan is part of a courtship by Orban of China and Russia, say analysts. Orban “looks to China and Russia as the alternative to the West,” according to Andras Simonyi, a former Hungarian ambassador to the United States and to NATO, citing the planned campus. “The incoming Biden administration, in its efforts to rebuild transatlantic relationships, should take note,” he said in a commentary in The Hill, a Washington-based newspaper, last week.
In November, Hungary renewed a cultural, scientific and educational treaty with China, which a spokesman for the Hungarian government said was in line with Budapest’s support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious trillion-dollar transcontinental trade and infrastructure project spanning Eurasia, Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa.
The initiative has prompted the disquiet not only of the United States, but also of European Union leaders, who have voiced concern about Beijing's growing political clout in Europe and its use of commerce, investment and education as tools of statecraft.
The Hungarian government says the new campus will “enhance” the educational standards of Hungarian universities, teaching knowledge and skills vital for the development of Hungary’s economy. Hungarian officials raised no objections to Fudan University amending its charter recently, which saw a commitment to “freedom of thought” being replaced with a pledge to follow the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
Orban has cited Russia, Turkey and China as useful models for Hungary’s political development, and relations have warmed rapidly the past few years between Budapest, Beijing and Moscow. Eighteen months ago, the Hungarian government approved the relocation to Budapest of a Russian bank steeped in Cold War history headed by the son of a KGB (Soviet secret police) officer, who helped repress the 1956 Hungarian revolt against the Soviet Union.
U.S. and Western European officials have voiced increasing frustration with Orban’s pivot east and the burgeoning friendship with both China and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Orban has opposed Western sanctions on Russia and in 2014 he bucked the West’s diplomatic isolation of the Russian leader in the wake of the Russian annexation of Crimea, welcoming Putin to Budapest and agreeing on a controversial $12 billion loan deal with the Kremlin to upgrade a Soviet-era nuclear power plant in Paks, 100 kilometers south of Budapest.
The contract was awarded without any counterbids and the details were classified until a court ordered the government to divulge them.
Since his reelection in 2010, critics have denounced Orban for what they see as a sustained erosion of democratic checks and balances. In 2019, Freedom House, a U.S.-based research organization, described Hungary as only “partly free,” the first time in history it has withheld from an EU member state the designation “free.” It accused Orban’s government of having “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”
Nonetheless some analysts say that Orban’s political friendships with China and Russia aren’t based on any real ideological affinity, but more on the Hungarian leader’s assessment of the balance of power in Europe and his wanting to hedge his bets between the Eastern autocracies and Western democracies, playing them against each other in a bid to secure the best deals he can for Hungary.
Orban said on Friday that he was considering approving a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine for use in Hungary because the EU was not providing sufficient supplies of European-approved vaccines. “We’re unable to move faster with inoculating people not because Hungarian health care is incapable of carrying out mass vaccinations rapidly but because we have a shortage of vaccine supplies,” he said in an interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio.
He added: “The vaccination rate in the EU is below 1 percent due to the fact that there are not enough vaccines here.”
Orban’s tilt eastward has largely been overlooked by the Trump administration. The outgoing U.S. president saw Orban as a populist anti-immigrant ally. And Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, described Orban as “Trump before Trump.”
But the incoming Biden administration is unlikely to be as friendly or view Orban’s warming ties with Beijing and Moscow with as much equanimity, say diplomats. In October while on the election campaign trail, Biden compared Orban’s Hungary and populist-led Poland to Belarus, saying NATO was at risk of “beginning to crack” because of an absence of American leadership. And last month at a research group event in Washington, Victoria Nuland, a Biden pick for a top job at the U.S. State Department, expressed her concern about European states backsliding on democracy.
Orban, who faces a likely tough election next year, was largely ostracized by the Obama administration for presiding over what Washington saw as an erosion of democratic checks and balances. Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president. Orban also broke with diplomatic norms last year by publicly endorsing Trump in the White House race and making it clear he didn’t like working with Democrats, whom he dubbed “moral imperialists.”
He withheld congratulating Biden after the vote, only to do so belatedly in a letter, rather than with a phone call.
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College athletes push for voter turnout while largely avoiding controversy as election nears
Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
