Lecture - Monday 13th July 2009

The Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes and Michael Ancram MP, GSF chairman

Lord Patten was elected as Member of Parliament for Bath in May 1979, a seat he held until April 1992. In 1983 he wrote The Tory Case, a study of Conservatism. Following the 1983 General Election, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and in September 1985 Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science. In September 1986 he became Minister for Overseas Development at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1989 and was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1998. In July 1989, he became Secretary of State for the Environment. In November 1990 he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chairman of the Conservative Party. Lord Patten was appointed Governor of Hong Kong in April 1992, a position he held until 1997, overseeing the return of Hong Kong to China. He was Chairman of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland set up under the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which reported in 1999. In September 1999 he was appointed European Commissioner for External Relations, a post he held until November 2004. On leaving office in Brussels he was made a life peer and took his seat in the House of Lords in January 2005. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University in 1999, and elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2003. His publications include East and West (1998) and Not Quite the Diplomat (2005). His most recent book is What Next? Surviving the Twenty-first Century (Allen Lane, October 2008).

In his lecture, Lord Patten gave a comprehensive overview of what is happening in China today. In response to the question of whether the 21st century belongs to China, Lord Patten said that while he admired what China's achievements, he did not see an equivalency to 19th century Bismarckian Germany. In his view, the US remains the world's sole superpower, while increasingly understanding that its post-war period of domination is at an end and that in order to solve any serious problem in the world today, it will have to work with China and India and to some extent Brazil and others as well. Lord Patten concluded that he did not see the future as being one 'in which China is going to have to work out how it can work with the US in order to exercise global domination. The argument is still the other way round. One of the principle jobs that America has, and Europe as well, in the next years is to persuade China that as a great economic power with considerable political influence, it has a vested interest in stability.'

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