Relations between China and Hungary can be traced back to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, when the two countries established official diplomatic relations. As we look back, we can state that before the millennium the relations of the two countries had different periods, which generally can be characterised by fluctuation and fractionality. In the 2000s, the cooperation between China and Hungary gained new impetus as Hungary tried to re-establish its traditional Eastern relations and as China deepened its international relation system with the world.
The economic crisis of 2008 retrospectively seems to be a major turning point in the economic and geopolitical prospects for China and for Hungary in the East-Central European region. It signalled the intensified need to restructure the global economic and political systems. The economic crisis brought about the need to diversify more the political, economic, cultural and people-to-people relations in both countries. This process coupled with the rapidly changing and evolving international economic and geopolitical environment offered new prospects for further development of political, economic and cultural relation and intensified knowledge-sharing between the two countries despite the significant geographical distance.
Based on this background the main theme of the conference is to summarise the history and results of the different dimensions of relations and connections. An equally important topic of the conference is the future development possibilities hold by the new challenges and opportunities of the 21th century. The conference will promote exchanges of academic ideas and different perspectives.
The conference intends to strengthen the bridge between the two countries and would like to contribute to a deeper mutual understanding. In addition, the key idea of the conference is to give retrospective summery of the bilateral relations and based on it to explore new possibilities and opportunities to deepen the connections and relations in the light of rapidly transforming global environment. This means that countries from very different geographical and cultural areas may increasingly find common interests and best practices that can be utilized for the benefit of the development of the future relations.
MAGYAR NEMZETI BANK
FUDAN UNIVERSITY
CORVINUS UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST