The avoided memory between China and Hungary

In the European Union, Hungary and other Central Eastern European (CEE) countries take a relatively more ambiguous attitude towards China. Hungary is one of the earliest countries welcoming the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. The relationship between Hungary and China has already gone beyond economic ties and governmental cooperation to further people-to-people engagements and even political party exchanges. During the pandemic, China supported mass supplies to Hungary and other CEE countries. Hungary was one of the earliest European countries recognising and importing Chinese vaccines. In the studies of China-Hungary and China-CEE relationships, the current ties cross the Eurasia continent has been well discussed from multiple perspectives. However, the historical effects of communist internationalism along the Berlin-Prague-Mosco-Beijing line in the last century received less attention in the current debates. Although there are plenty of literature focusing on the legacies of communist camp during the Cold War, more specifically, a gap is remained to weave the legacies and China-Hungary collective memories together and to analyse the collective communist memories’ role in the relationships nowadays. Surprisingly, both China and Hungary try to avoid the “comradeship” history, especially their close connection under the leadership of the Soviet Union before the Sino-Soviet split, in the current cooperation between China and Hungary. For instance, both sides selectively forget China’s involvement in the crackdown of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the once popularity of radical Maoism among Hungarian youths and intellectuals. The research questions of this paper ask why both sides avoid the comradeship history, their collective memories, and the storytelling narratives in their current cooperation. What is the role and impacts of these collective memories after which are deliberately avoided in the current China-Hungary relationships? This paper will first review the narratives and storytelling of the memory construction in these two countries. Then, this paper will bring these memories alive into the discussion of the current bilateral relationship in a broader content. It uses strategic narratives concept to interpret how historical memories are strategically mobilised by both sides. Because the research focuses on the position of state actors, it uses documents and contents from state officials, (semi-)official think tanks and official media. This paper aims to discuss how the EU member states, taking Hungary as a case, engage with the politics of memory and emotions vis-à-vis third countries, with what consequences. Hungary-China is an interesting case as it analyse the topic from the “memory avoided” rather than direct using and reproducing memories. This paper will enrich the theoretical debates of memory politics in the IR discipline and also provide new empirical findings on the China-Hungary and China-EU relationships, which also joins the discussion of the EU’s foreign policy towards China.