Gergely Karacsony, mayor of Budapest, last week renamed a number of streets in the Hungarian capital. Free Hong Kong Road, Dalai Lama Street and Uyghur Martyrs’ Road converge on a spot in the city that is supposed to house the first European outpost of China’s Fudan University. The Chinese foreign ministry said Karacsony’s stunt was “contemptible”.

It took a bit longer for the message to get through to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who has made the Fudan campus a flagship project to woo Beijing. Over the weekend, thousands of Hungarians marched through Budapest in protest against the Fudan scheme, forcing the Orban government into an apparent retreat. No final decision on the scheme had yet been made, his ministers said, and none would be taken until after next year’s parliamentary elections. It would then be put to a referendum in the capital.

No decision taken? It was barely six weeks ago that the Hungarian government signed a detailed agreement with the Chinese authorities, for the new 520,000 square metre campus for up to 8,000 students and 500 faculty staff, with accompanying sports venue and conference centre. Few costs or financing details have been disclosed but Direkt36, an investigative news outlet, obtained government documents estimating the construction cost at €1.5bn, more than Hungary’s entire higher education budget for 2019. Much of it would be financed by a Chinese loan.