World Expo 2030: the day of decision
Colosseum in Rome at sunrise, Italy, Europe. (Shutterstock)
Tomorrow delegates from 179 countries to World Expo 2030 will award the global trade fair to one of three cities: Riyadh, Busan or Rome. The stakes are high in Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Italy: thousands of jobs and investments running into billions of dollars depend on who wins the prize. Tuesday is the day of decision.
But World Expo 2030 matters far beyond the countries immediately affected. At a time when wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, economic crises and cultural conflicts demand our attention, this greatest of all human celebrations of peaceful prosperity through trade, culture and commerce is a blazing beacon of hope for the future.
Precisely for that reason, however, it matters hugely which of the three cities takes the victor’s laurels. The symbolism of this competition to hold the exposition in 2030 is no less significant than the trade fair itself. If the choice falls to an unworthy recipient, to a state that disregards universal values such as democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law, then that gleam of light in a dark world will be obscured or even snuffed out.
It goes without saying that these values are universal only in theory, not in practice. One of the regions of the world most bereft of such practice is the Middle East, a vast region with a population of nearly 500 million which extends from Egypt to Iran and from Turkey to Yemen. Though there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of its inhabitants who live in hope that they might live to see at least some of the liberties enjoyed by the West enshrined in their own lands, few of the 17 Middle Eastern countries are even superficially democratic. Indeed, the only one that compares favourably with the West in its political culture, Israel, has been treated as an interloper by its neighbours for most of its existence.
Yet primarily for religious and economic reasons, Saudi Arabia has always enjoyed a degree of preeminence in the region. The Kingdom has the prestige of guardianship over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the cradle of Islam. And for the past century, the Saudis’ fabulous oil wealth has enabled them to act as primus inter pares in the Arab world and, increasingly, as a serious player on the global stage.
Hence the Saudi bid for World Expo 2030 aims to promote their status as a legitimate guest at the diplomatic top table. That too is a means to an even grander design: the perpetuation of the Saudi royal dynasty into the next century, long after fossil fuels have ceased to guarantee political influence. The Kingdom hopes to survive indefinitely without renouncing more than an insignificant fraction of its absolute power.
Riyadh is the keystone of that plan. Hence the elaborate, even utopian, architectural schemes promised in the Saudi bid for Expo 2030. Yet these castles in the air, even if they were actually to be built, would be no more than the Arabian equivalent of the fairy tale castles of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Like the Wagnerian world that Ludwig sought to recreate in stone, Saudi Riyadh is another kind of medieval fantasy, only built on sand.
For all its high tech adornments and promises of reform, the Saudi Kingdom remains a cruelly authoritarian patriarchy, where political parties, representation and dissent are outlawed, human rights are subordinate to sharia law and freedoms of speech, assembly, worship or even thought are denied. Punishments remain draconian, with 196 executions last year. Many public beheadings still take place, sometimes for such “crimes” as sorcery. Many victims are foreign workers, especially women, who are treated by the courts as barely human. A recent ban on juvenile executions has proved illusory, because adults can still be tried for offences allegedly committed as children. Female genital mutilation is still practised on a large scale in Saudi Arabia. The extent of hudud (amputation of hands or feet, lashes and other corporal punishments) is unclear, but it can be imposed at the discretion of sharia courts. Torture is commonly used to extract confessions from political detainees and religious dissidents.
In view of this unspeakable record on human rights, it is remarkable that Riyadh is the favourite to be chosen for World Expo 2030. Turning a blind eye to such seemingly immutable barbarism requires considerable sophistry. Yet there are those who choose to ignore even the notorious murder of Jamal Kashoggi, lured to his gruesome fate in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. What gives this case its continuing resonance is firstly that the victim was a journalist working for various international networks, including the Washington Post, and secondly that it was an assassination ordered by the de facto ruler of the Kingdom: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, usually known as MBS. Hence this was a quasi-official attack on the free press in the West, intended to discourage criticism of the Saudi state.
Even at a commercial level, the alienating impact on visitors of the Saudi human rights record coming under the microscope should be a grave concern for those considering the rival bids. Combined with the inhospitable climate, this concern ought to be a red flag not only for organisers and investors, but also for those who might exhibit there — and of course for the tens of millions of hoped-for visitors. A Saudi World Expo could well feature a repeat of the empty stands at the Qatari World Cup — only much worse.
Compare this grim picture with the situation in South Korea. It is true that South Korean democracy is only just over a quarter of a century old and still a work in progress, but the human rights record there is incomparably better than in any Middle Eastern country except Israel. I have no doubt that Busan is a worthy contender for World Expo 2030.
However, confidence in South Korea’s ability to stage large scale international events suffered a serious setback last August, when the World Scout Jamboree — intended as a dress rehearsal for World Expo — turned into a PR disaster. The facilities were unhygienic and inadequate, insects and disease were rife, and many people left early. As the admirably independent Korean press pointed out, if Seoul is incapable of catering for 43,000 scouts, how is it going to cope with numbers perhaps exceeding the 28 million expected to attend the Osaka World Expo in 2025?
And so we come to Rome. Not only is it the eternal city — it is the city of eternal return and renewal. The Romans have set aside their political differences to make their pitch for the world fair. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, was once an unsuccessful Right-wing candidate to be mayor of the capital. Now she is working closely with the present Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, a man of the Left, and the head of the Expo team, former Mayor Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Party. If Rome wins, all three politicians will turn to Matteo Gatti, the brilliant technocrat who plans to create a glittering new complex based on the Sail, an abandoned building site in the outskirts of the city. Gualtieri has promised to upgrade Rome’s public transport to cope with the influx of visitors, including a rail connection from the Sail to the Coliseum. In 2025 the Papal Holy Year will test the capital’s capacity to accommodate millions of pilgrims. But Milan has already successfully hosted World Expo in 2015, so there is no doubt about the Italian ability to manage such large-scale events. It will not have escaped the experts’ notice that neither Saudi Arabia nor South Korea has ever hosted world fair before.
The die is cast and may the best bid win. In my mind, there is no doubt that Rome’s credentials are far superior to those of its rivals. Jacob Burckhardt, the greatest historian of the Renaissance, was surely right to say that “all in all she is still the Queen of the World”. But there is also a symbolic significance of Italy and its capital, still a bastion of Western civilisation, triumphing in this contest. We have witnessed what happens when enemies of civilisation try to destroy it. Trade is an essential pillar of civilisation and World Expo 2030 is an essential element in the global economy. Of the three candidates, only Rome represents both the commercial and the cultural foundations of the civilised world. She deserves to triumph.
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