Weimar's Courtyard of the Muses by Theobald von Oer, a tribute to The Enlightenment and the Weimar Classicism depicting German poets Schiller, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe
July 29, 2026
By Najmidin Qarluq
Key Takeaways:
Enlightenment values of human dignity, liberty, democracy, and the rule of law are not a settled European inheritance but an unfinished struggle that must still be actively defended, especially against authoritarian systems that subordinate individuals to the state.
Europe’s growing economic dependence on China (large and rising trade deficits, concentration in critical technologies) reduces its practical ability to uphold these values, resist extraterritorial coercion, and protect dissidents when political disagreements become costly.
To remain credible, Europe must rebuild industrial and technological capacity, treat transnational repression as a sovereignty issue, and refuse the temptation to trade principles for short-term economic or political convenience.
From Brussels, the Enlightenment can look like settled history.
It is written into treaties, invoked in speeches and built into the architecture of the European Union. The language of human dignity, liberty, democracy and the rule of law is so familiar that it can seem permanent. Europe often speaks of these values as though they were an inheritance safely stored away — something to be cited when convenient, not something that must still be defended.
For me, they are not abstract.
I live in Brussels, while members of my family and democratic-minded intellectuals from my homeland have been imprisoned by the Chinese state. Their alleged offence was not violence. It was independent thought: the belief that people have a right to speak, write, organise and preserve an identity without first asking the state for permission.
That experience makes the current European debate look different. When officials speak of “de-risking,” trade exposure or strategic autonomy, they are not discussing technical files alone. They are discussing whether Europe will retain the capacity to protect the principles on which its own political order rests — and the people who depend on those principles beyond its borders.
The Enlightenment’s battle, in other words, is unfinished.
A standard, not a monument
The French Revolution did not create a flawless political order. Its legacy included terror, war and profound contradictions. But it made a demand that could not be fully withdrawn: political authority must justify itself; law must not simply be the will of the powerful; and human beings cannot be treated merely as instruments of the state.
That demand became the moral core of modern European democracy. It was never universally fulfilled, including by Europe itself. But it created a standard against which power could be judged and challenged.
This is what is often lost when Europe treats the Enlightenment as cultural decoration. Its importance was never that Europeans had discovered a final answer to history. Its importance was that they accepted a permanent argument with power.
A government may claim national security. It may claim economic necessity. It may claim social order. But it must still face a question: what limits does it recognise? What rights does it leave untouched? Can an individual dissent without becoming an enemy?
The answer offered by the Chinese party-state is increasingly clear. The state does not merely govern society; it defines the political boundaries within which society, identity, history and speech may exist. A person, a community or a business becomes acceptable only insofar as it serves a state-defined national project.
That is not simply a Chinese domestic matter when the system begins to extend its claims beyond China’s borders.
When coercion travels
Europeans should take seriously the expanding use of extraterritorial national-security claims by Beijing and Hong Kong authorities. Article 38 of Hong Kong’s National Security Law asserts jurisdiction over certain alleged offences committed outside Hong Kong, including by people who are not Hong Kong residents. The EU itself condemned the July 2025 arrest warrants issued by Hong Kong police against overseas pro-democracy activists, noting that one of the people targeted was an EU citizen.[eeas.europa]
The immediate question is not whether Chinese authorities can lawfully enforce these claims on the streets of Brussels, Paris or Berlin. They cannot simply replace European law with their own. The deeper issue is that the claim is being made at all.
A state that declares political speech abroad punishable is stating that foreign sovereignty is secondary to its own security interests. It is testing whether democratic countries will treat such conduct as a serious intrusion or as an unfortunate detail to be managed around commercial relations.
For dissidents, journalists, exiles and members of targeted communities, this is not theoretical. It affects how freely they can speak, travel, contact relatives or participate in public life. It also creates a larger test for Europe: can it protect political freedom within its own borders when the pressure comes from a major economic partner?
This is where the Enlightenment’s old conflict returns. The issue is not merely whether Europe disapproves of repression. The issue is whether Europe is prepared to place legal limits on power when doing so carries a price.
The cost of dependence
That price is rising because Europe’s economic relationship with China has become increasingly asymmetric.
In 2025, the EU’s goods-trade deficit with China reached €359.9 billion, an increase of 2.7% from the previous year; the deficit was €98 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. A deficit is not, by itself, proof of decline. Countries can run deficits for many reasons. But in this case it reflects a deeper pattern: Europe buys growing volumes of industrial, technological and consumer goods from a country whose manufacturing scale, state support and supply-chain reach give it increasing leverage.[policy.trade.ec.europa]
The danger is not that a Chinese product crosses a European border. Open trade has benefited Europe, and Europe cannot build prosperity through permanent economic closure. The danger is that European leaders mistake dependence for interdependence.
Interdependence implies reciprocal vulnerability. Dependence means one side has fewer practical choices when a political disagreement becomes costly.
That distinction matters in sectors that will shape the next generation of prosperity: batteries, solar equipment, electric vehicles, critical-mineral processing, industrial machinery, digital infrastructure and low-cost consumer platforms. When production capacity, supplier networks and technological standards become concentrated elsewhere, Europe loses more than market share. It loses room for manoeuvre.
A continent that cannot supply key inputs, develop competitive technologies or protect its firms from unfairly subsidised competition will eventually find that its political choices have become expensive. Sanctions become harder. Human-rights conditionality becomes harder. Defending targeted communities becomes harder. Even a clear assertion of sovereignty becomes harder when policymakers fear retaliation against energy, industrial supply chains, exports or employment.
This is why economic power and political values cannot be separated. The former is not a substitute for the latter. It is one of the conditions that allows the latter to be defended.
The temptation to retreat
The same weakness appears inside Europe.
By “MAGA,” I do not mean only the American political movement. I mean the broader political instinct that treats immediate national or personal advantage as more real than shared commitments, institutions and long-term responsibility. It appears whenever leaders ask why they should bear a cost for Ukraine, for democratic solidarity, for labour rights or for a common European response to coercion.
This instinct is understandable in an age of stagnant wages, high housing costs, insecure employment and public frustration. People who feel economically exposed are more likely to distrust distant institutions and reject moral language that seems disconnected from daily life.
But this is precisely why Europe must not treat industrial decline as a separate economic problem.
If Europe’s productive base weakens, its citizens do not merely lose jobs in particular regions. They lose confidence that democratic politics can provide security, mobility and dignity. That vacuum will be filled by those who promise easy answers: close the border, blame an outsider, abandon common rules, make a deal with whichever power offers the cheapest goods or the quickest investment.
The most dangerous consequence of economic decline is therefore not only lower growth. It is political demoralisation. A society that no longer believes it can shape its own future becomes more willing to trade principles for apparent stability.
That is how values retreat: not necessarily through a dramatic defeat, but through small concessions that begin to feel practical.
Europe must not choose a new dependency
Europe does not need to choose dependence on Washington over dependence on Beijing. It needs to rebuild the capacity to act with the United States and other democratic partners where interests converge, while restoring the industrial and technological base that makes European autonomy credible.
That requires a more serious agenda than slogans about “strategic autonomy.”
First, Europe needs joint capacity in critical technologies: not only subsidies, but shared procurement, research investment, energy infrastructure, capital markets and standards-setting. A fragmented continent cannot compete effectively with continental-scale Chinese industrial policy or American capital markets.
Second, Europe must treat foreign coercion as a sovereignty issue. Extraterritorial intimidation, threats against diasporas and transnational repression should be met through coordinated law enforcement, diplomatic consequences and clear protection for those targeted. The European response cannot be limited to carefully worded statements after arrest warrants are issued.
Third, Europe must stop pretending that consumer welfare is served only by the lowest possible price. Cheap imports can help households under pressure. But if their long-term effect is to hollow out domestic productive capacity, weaken labour standards, erode tax bases and deepen strategic dependence, then the apparent bargain is not cost-free.
The purpose is not to imitate China’s political economy. Europe would lose its most important advantage if it answered authoritarian state capitalism with authoritarianism of its own. The task is harder: to show that democracy can still organise investment, innovation and security without abandoning legal restraint, public scrutiny or individual freedom.
The real unfinished battle
The Enlightenment is not a museum exhibit. It is a test that returns whenever power asks to be freed from limits.
China’s rise does not prove that Europe’s values have failed. Nor does China’s economic success prove that authoritarianism is a superior political system. A system should not be judged only by the speed at which it builds factories, infrastructure or export industries. It should also be judged by whether people can speak without fear, choose their lives freely, hold power accountable and correct public mistakes without becoming targets of the state.
But Europe has no right to assume that these values will defend themselves.
From Brussels, it is easy to see how the language of values can become routine. From the perspective of those who have watched family members disappear into prison systems because they exercised independent thought, routine language is not enough.
Europe’s values will remain credible only if Europe has the courage and capacity to make them real: in its laws, in its markets, in its alliances and in its willingness to defend sovereignty against coercion.
That is the Enlightenment’s unfinished battle. It is not between Europe and China alone. It is between two enduring ideas of political order: one in which power is accountable to the individual, and another in which the individual exists at the pleasure of power.
About Najmidin Qarluq
Najmidin Qarluq is a Brussels-based writer, policy analyst, and Principal Analyst at the EU Risk Analysis Institute. Drawing from his background as a former political prisoner, he specializes in EU-China relations, geopolitical risk, and the defense of open societies and Enlightenment values.
View all posts by Najmidin Qar
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