Nowadays, the West can be described as decadent. That does not mean simply that we are addicted to “bread and circuses,” from welfare programs in Europe (which we can barely afford) to the Super Bowl in the United States. It means also that we are increasingly reluctant to allow our own vision of civil liberties and human rights to shape our foreign policies, owing to the potential commercial costs.
Consider the case of the Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who recently died while serving an 11-year prison sentence for calling for democracy in China. The Chinese authorities refused Liu’s request, made just weeks before his death, to seek treatment abroad for his aggressive cancer, and his wife remains under house arrest.
China’s treatment of dissidents like Liu is nothing short of savage. Yet Western leaders have offered only a few carefully phrased diplomatic statements criticizing it.
I can only wonder how many Western leaders in recent years have raised Liu’s case with their Chinese counterparts behind closed doors. Opportunities surely abounded, including at this summer’s G20 meeting, when Liu was on his deathbed.
But it seems unlikely that Western leaders confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping on the matter. After all, when Liu was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010, and an infuriated China attempted to ostracize Norway, the West did not express outrage or display real solidarity with a NATO ally.
China’s treatment of Hong Kong has gone similarly uncontested by Western leaders. China seems intent on violating its obligations, established in the “joint declaration” signed with the United Kingdom, to preserve the city’s way of life and the rule of law until 2047. Already, it has threatened the independence of the judiciary, the autonomy of universities, and freedom of the press. Yet there has been little pushback from the West, including the UK.
Why are Western countries so reluctant to criticize China’s behavior more loudly and consistently? The answer, it seems, is money.
Greece, which proudly claims to be the cradle of democracy, has leaders who largely grew up opposing an authoritarian military government. Yet its cash-strapped government recently blocked the European Union from criticizing China’s human-rights record at the United Nations, because China provides critical investment, particularly from the China Ocean Shipping Company, known as COSCO, which in August 2016 acquired a majority stake in the port of Piraeus. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras – a supposedly radical leftist who, paying homage to Che Guevara, named his son Ernesto – has become a Chinese patsy.
The West’s moral bankruptcy is on display closer to home, too. The EU continues to hold back from condemning the thuggery of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has proudly boasted of his belief in “illiberal democracy” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). Under Orbán’s leadership, breaches of human-rights conventions in the treatment of refugees have been accompanied by a crackdown on civil society, particularly on organizations that receive money from outside the country.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras – a supposedly radical leftist who, paying homage to Che Guevara, named his son Ernesto – has become a Chinese patsy
One notable target of repression is Central European University, a bastion of open debate, teaching, and research in Hungary, which is funded by George Soros. Orbán has even gone so far as to resurrect some of the nastiest anti-Semitic images of 1930s Hungary (an ally of Nazi Germany) to demonize Soros. Yet Orbán himself attended the University of Oxford (where I am Chancellor) on a Soros-funded scholarship, and studied there under the great liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin.
Even as Orbán’s Hungary rejects the obligations of EU membership, it receives more than €5.5 billion ($6.4 billion) from the EU each year, while contributing less than €1 billion to the common budget. Why should European citizens pay so much to a government that thumbs its nose at them and compares the EU to the Soviet Union? At the very least, the EU should apply the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty that allow it to suspend some of the rights of a country that is breaking its rules and showing contempt for its standards and values.
The behavior of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) government – which shows scant concern for either law or justice – raises similar issues. The government is working to overhaul the constitution, in order to thwart democratic checks and balances. It plainly wants judges to do what politicians tell them, and it does not want the media to be able to say much about it. I daresay that China’s rulers would have no difficulty in understanding the PiS’s approach.
Turkey, of course, is not a member of the EU, nor will it ever become one if it continues along the road of dictatorial repression taken by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, no small fan of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But, judging by the EU’s growing tolerance of illiberalism, some EU leaders may well be prepared to contemplate a closer relationship with Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Such foreign-policy decadence threatens to undermine the EU’s claim to be a community of values, not just a glorified customs union. As we know from the 1920s and 1930s, as decadence breeds more decadence, the world becomes an increasingly dangerous and unstable place. It is time for Europe – joined by the United States after President Donald Trump leaves office – to find our moral compass once again.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017.
www.project-syndicate.org
When schmuck Patten criticises the West, always is about it not being colonial and condescending enough for his overbearing standards.
Chris Patten, what do you mean, "Civil Liberties, human rights, democracy"? Have you read almost daily news about the minorities being murdered by the US police force? Have you heard of "Black Life Matters"? How about the tortures and renditions cariied out by the Bush Administration during the Iraq invasion? Have you heard the news of NSA earsdropping program? So, please do not talk about a bunch of garbages expounded from your mouth with the purpose of poking your nose to the other countries! You are just a neo-con with a double standard.
you forgot to address..the so caaled sham democracy in the west has banned muslim refugees a colonolia practice,the illegal wars in iraq,afghanistan libya,and the democratic rise of the far right..even before i dwell further in to the past..
Wow, what a load of unbelievable horseshit. This is anlo-saxon delusional exceptionalism, interventionism and elitism. I am writing this from the center of Europe, why the hell we should criticize China? China is a country belonging to chinesse people, if they really wanted change they would get it, i don’t blame them if they don’t. After centuries of opression – mainly from the UK – they are sovereign and unasailable, they raise hundreds of milions from poverty and their economy is a subject of envy.
The real decadents in the West are those neoliberal morons running the West doing the jobs of Greater Israel to globalise Wahhabism to end Christendom and opposing Putin and Assad who are the saviours of Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Moral compass ? England went to war to "save/protect Poland " and what was the final result ? During which era of British diplomacy did Morality matter ? During the Opium Trade ? Dealing with anyone opposed to their Colonial empire ?
I distinctly remember a panel discussion on Hong Kong TV, a few years before handover , when eminent "experts" from those running the territory claimed HK wasnt ripe for Democracy. Once China didnt give them any extension, suddenly and to this date, it would seem Democracy is the flavour to push !!!
I think all inventions like Medicine,virus vaccine,Petrol,Electricity,Computers,telephone,nuclear science,internet,steel making,automobiles,aeroplanes,television were all invented in china……after those inventions only china could trade & make money in billions & trillions ….in my case also at a young age i learnt a secret i should kick the ladder on whose efforts i have climbed i am in chinese century you see
"Liu Xiaobo, who recently died while serving an 11-year prison sentence for calling for democracy in China."
No, Liu had been ‘calling for democracy’ for 30 years without trouble. It was when he took $2 million from the US Government, didn’t declare it (his wife laundered it) and passed around a loony ‘petition’ timed to embarrass the government on the eve of the Olympics and coordinated with the Tibetan riots. THAT’s why he was jailed.
Daryl Shen, in the Spanish Inquisition, when four hundred thousand Moriscos Muslims were being forcibly converted To Christianity and in the end expelled after they had lived there for eight centuries, Christians and Muslims in the Muslim lands continued living in harmony. Even during the crusade wars, which caused the death of three million people mostly Muslims, the harmony prevailed.
Remember that questions like "the Jewish question" and the "Moriscos question" that arose in Europe and that was answered with inquisition, expulsion, and holocaust, the Christian question never arose in the east because eastern Orthodox Christians are integral part of the eastern culture. A fringe bunch of fanatics cannot change that fact.
Patten as chancellor? Standards at Oxford University are dropping!
No much I can said about this article. What I have seen after the late President Ronald Reagan has been a New World Order: Human rights advocates, pro-freedom and democracy advocates or the like have been suppressed and hunt. There could happen in many parts of the world, but I know for sure in the USA.
Time is a factor in the governance of nations. We want instant gratification for all we see and feel we need but in the complexity of integrated nation states it’s often hard to move the needle on appreciable change quickly. I agree that there is questionable attitudes and practices in the nation states you mentioned and more that slipped the confines off your article but I see an overall development trend taking shape that is bigger than the issues you mentioned. The spheres of influence between the East and West is solidifying on the world stage and becoming accepted fact. What i see is the pains of adjustment to the world order playing out in front of our eyes and bothering the sensibilities while the intentions are for global development the short term pertabations are painful. Especially when the nature of a population is resistant to the changes required for the sustainable development of a species as a whole. Predictably we can see who is capable of making transitions and who are not and I would posit that is the rational behind the warfare.
Values…are there for stable societies who have obtained self reliance in the systems being evolved.
Perhaps?
Chris Patten is not ‘Irish’ unless one genuinely believes politics are inherited. He is zn, at least, third generation ‘Anglo’. He was an understrapper in the NIO (Northern Ireland Office) and took a genuine interest in the place. But it was the ‘interest’ of a slightly puzzled Englishman.
A self rightous schmuck like Patten (whose own country—the original evil empire–and whose country turned China into a opium den) has the BALLS to criticise the Chinese leadership——-what a JOKE. Dude, wake up——-it is all about ringing the register in this Global world that your ilk admire so much.
The West may certainly be decadent, but much less for its failure or reluctance to criticise China, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, – but much rather for its spineless, Vasall like attitude and "obedience" to USA. One need not wonder who’s "child" Chris Patten is – SOROS. That Urban rejects his "friendly" help – I have more than just understanding for. And that Erdogan is pulled down in USA and Western (actually the same) Press, after a failed coup against him, with the help of CIA backed Gülen,- only days after Erdogan made friendly overtures to Putin- speaks for itself. – In sum I would say, – Patten is blind on more than one eye.