Xi's visit to bring more development opportunities for Hungary: former PM

Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Hungary will bring about more development opportunities for the European country, said former Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy in a recent interview.

Xi is paying a state visit to Hungary at the invitation of Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary is the last leg of Xi's current three-nation Europe tour, which has already taken him to France and Serbia.

Since the 1980s, Medgyessy has been invited to visit China for many times, and he has been closely following China's development and changes over the years. He said that under the leadership of President Xi, the achievements from China's development in recent years have been remarkable.

"Look at China, you see China, how it developed, how it changed. He (Chinese President Xi Jinping) chose very right the goals of the development of China. For me what is very important to fighting against the poverty. That's good for the people, good for China. And you know, if China is developing quickly, this is good for the world too," said Medgyessy.

Medgyessy said that President Xi's visit will further deepen the development of relations between Hungary and China and open up more development opportunities for Hungary.

"This visit can help to make even better the relations between China and Hungary, and I have a lot of expectations. First of all, it's very important to show the friendship between China and Hungary, to encourage the Chinese investors, the Chinese traders, the Chinese tourists to come in Hungary and to show that the Chinese people is very welcome in Hungary in the field of tourism, but (also) in the other territories, like the trade or the cultural relations," said Medgyessy.

As the first European country to sign a Belt and Road Initiative cooperation agreement with China, Hungary has been a distribution center for China-Europe freight trains and a crucial link in the logistics transport corridor between China and Europe over the past decade.

Medgyessy noted that the Belt and Road cooperation has boosted the practical cooperation between the two countries.

"This is a very big and very important initiative, not only the economy, but on the other fields also. This open the doors to have more trade, have more cooperation, to have more cultural relations, studying (and) to make the research together," said Medgyessy. Medgyessy actively promoted friendly exchanges between Hungary and China during his tenure as Prime Minister of Hungary from 2002 to 2004. The Hungarian-Chinese bilingual school established under his advocacy is an important platform for Hungarian youths to learn Chinese language and culture.

Over the past two decades, the growing popularity of the Chinese language and culture among the Hungarians also contributes to the school's continuous development. Initially, most students were from Chinese families living and working in Hungary. Currently, the school has 12 grades and 20 classes with more than 530 students, with the majority being native Hungarians.

"I'm really very proud to make this initiative. This school is developing quite important and quite quickly. And now I see that's the young ladies coming from the school going to China to learn in the university, Chinese university. This really shows the interest of the two countries and makes the friendship between the young people and the friendship of the young generation. This is the future. I'm really very proud and I'm very happy because I learned that President Xi sent a letter for the school and encouraging to continue and to have the good results," said Medgyessy.

Xi's visit to bring more development opportunities for Hungary: former PM

A total of 11 tech groups from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) are conducting the sampling mission in 16 provinces in the Yangtze River Basin from April to June this year to monitor the ecological environment in the longest river in China.

Researchers were collecting samples of aquatic organisms in the Poyang Lake section of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Poyang Lake is the largest lake that is connected to the Yangtze River in the middle and lower reaches.

It is an important spawning and feeding ground for fish in the Yangtze River, and also an important habitat for rare aquatic organisms such as finless porpoises. It plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem structure in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

"We need to monitor the basic water quality parameters, as well as three major categories: phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthic organisms. We collect samples from the bottom, the middle, and the surface, in order to identify the distribution of organisms across various levels. The white organisms (in the bottle) that occasionally jump are zooplankton," said Hu Sheng, senior engineer of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.

In order to ensure the quality, the samples were screened and sealed immediately after collection, and then taken to the monitoring ship for fixation.

Nowadays it is common to see finless porpoises in the Yangtze River. According to statistics, the number of finless porpoises in the Yangtze River has reached 1,249, achieving a historic rebound.

"The finless porpoise is the flagship species in the Yangtze River and the species at the top of the food chain. When the fish population recovers and the finless porpoises have more food, its population will also increase," said Zhang Jing, senior engineer of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.

The pilot monitoring of water ecology assessment in the Yangtze River Basin began in 2022 and has been carried out for three consecutive years, and this year is the last pilot year.

"In the next step, we will conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis and evaluation of the monitoring data to lay a good foundation for the formal water ecological assessment work in the Yangtze River Basin next year," said Xu Chong, head of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.

China conducts last pilot ecological assessment in Yangtze River