The world is facing the biggest power shift in decades, with the US poised to lose its leading position to China, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday.

This could result in a major conflict between Washington and Beijing unless the US accepts that it cannot be the “winner” forever, he warned.

“[China] has become a manufacturing powerhouse and is now overtaking America,” Orban said in his annual speech in the town of Baile Tusnad in Romania’s Eastern Transylvania.

In just 30 years, China has undergone the industrial revolution that took the West around three centuries, the Hungarian prime minister said, adding that America is about to say ‘goodbye’ to its status as the world’s only superpower.

Beijing is also challenging the values Washington seeks to portray as universal, Orban said. China considers American values to be a “hostile ideology,” he said, adding that “there is some truth in it.”

Such a development would certainly not sit well with Washington, which will want to remain “on top of the world” forever, Orban warned. He said attempts to challenge existing hegemony had led to major conflict on multiple occasions in human history. “There are no eternal winners and eternal losers,” he added.

A conflict between the two great powers is likely but not unavoidable, the Hungarian leader believes. The world needs to find a new balance, and the two opposing parties should recognize each other as equals, he said. Major nations have to “accept that, today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky,” Orban added.

Source: Agencies