Fifty years ago, Soviet and Chinese economic relations were limited to communist countries or their satellites. Eastern European countries, with relatively small economies and little income-generating capacity, remained under Soviet direction. However, because of the size of their internal markets, the Soviet and Chinese systems remained self-sufficient, and their satellite partners remained practically insignificant economic partners. Even less important to them were markets of the capitalist world – viewed with the utmost aversion. This self-imposed seclusion was also extended to their communist partners.

The period of isolation can be split into two. The first began following the death of Mao Zedung, when China under Deng Xiaoping began opening to the West. This was mainly directed toward the United States and Japan. As if by magic the countries that had been closed to trade the West began to develop once again, as did trade with "patriotic" Chinese capitals Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

At that time, however, it was out of the question that any Central or Eastern European country in alliance with a satellite of the Soviet Union could have profited from this opening. For example, following the oil crises of 1973 and 1978-79, Hungary could have done no better than to have increased exports, which promised to reap benefits in hard currency. At that time, Hungarian economic policy was directed toward exporting goods. But exports were not shipped to China - entirely for political reasons.

The Soviet Union argued little about Hungary’s healthy trade with West Germans, the French or Italians. But they would certainly have vetoed all openings to China – seen then as the "betrayer of Communism," and the de facto bedfellow of Ronald Reagan’s United States. Moscow handled everything that came from China, which in time would be viewed as an archenemy, with unprecedented severity and suspicion. This was the first time Hungary missed the boat.

János Kádár on his pilgrimage to China in 1987

Other satellite states, from East Germany to Bulgaria, were also helpless bystanders to the enormous Chinese boom in the 1980s.

All the while, Hungary could have started in a much better position than our allies. There were, however, reform economists in China. These people spent Mao’s Cultural Revolution in prison, in exile or in internal emigration. For many of these people, some who were in prison at the time, hearing about Hungarian economic reforms in the late 1960s offered an unprecedented taste of the forbidden fruit. Before a decade passed, these economists could have been given a leading role under Deng’s protective wings, but the powers that be made it impossible.

The second period of isolation began during the second half of the 1980s. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union loosened the entire Soviet political system. There was glasnost and perestroika. This worsened the crisis that had developed in the Soviet economy during the Brezhnev period. In the meantime, in Deng Xiaoping’s China, the state party system remained tightly intact. Politicians following Gorbachev’s example, such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, disappeared. The economic miracle was bringing increasingly obvious results.

During this time, the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, overdue for some 25 years, came to the agenda, and smaller socialist countries, with their new independence granted by Gorbachev, turned to China. Hungary even spurred on these developments: János Kádár went on a pilgrimage to China in the summer of 1987 to patch up relations. It was too late - Hungary missed the boat again.

Because despite the impetus of Central and Eastern Europe to develop relations with the crumbling Soviet empire and iron-fisted Chinese communists, it was no longer important, and was simply removed from the agenda over time.

In the years of systemic changes, not one Central or Eastern European politician had a vision of the place or role Russia and China should be given to two of the world’s greatest powers: one in terms of area, the other in population.

Hungary lived in the luxury of the poor. We could hardly wait to free ourselves of the Russians; and China was too far away, and too communist to be integrated into any kind of strategy. As if it were predestined, we missed the boat once more.

The Russian market was almost totally lost for Hungary, even though Ikarusz buses and Glóbusz tinned food were, for decades, emblematic objects for Soviet consumers. Despite Western partners and traders jostling in the Russian market, Hungarian politicians did not even look to Russia. It was even less so in China’s case, though its population is far bigger than Russia. In the last five years, meanwhile, Hungarian policy toward Russia and China has been reduced to a minimum. Emotions attached to official policy oscillated between loathing and indifference.

By the spring of 2002, when the Socialist-Free Democrat coalition came to power, they realized that Hungary had in fact no eastern policy, but simply a western orientation. This acknowledgement was all the more painful as the burden of Western Europe’s economic recession could have been lighter had we had enlivened eastern relations.

Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy managed to put out the fire when he visited Moscow and Beijing. We all know, however, that between dousing the flames and starting to re-build, time must pass. This is not the end of the story – only the beginning.