Read couple of articles in the newspaper today, both on the Tiananmen Square incident that completes twenty years today.Tiananmen symbolizes a lot. I understand some of them. Firstly the desire of a race can not be suppressed, some day “the people” as the say in China, will rise in agitation. An agitation that may well be as unpragmatic as the 1989 student rising of China was. Secondly the race desires collective wellbeing, very rarely is this desire expressed. Such occasions defy all prophecies. The occasion does not need some common minimum conditions to be fulfilled but one, the desire resonating in each at the same time. The third is if you can provide a specific challenge, which in case of China is a hysteria of leading the world, to the race you may well overshadow there desire that prevailed.
The question that comes out of a surgical change in desire of the Chinese youth with in one generation is what does the mankind wishes, Freedom of action and speech or the freedom of action and speech to establish money and security? The strength of a capitalist cum communist china is increasing; no doubt a substantial population has seen the benefits of the economic upturn. China has seen a spurt in nationalism, no longer does the Chinese wish a western system at there place in fact they aggressively defend the Chinese model. Does the certainty of a day’s bread and economic wellbeing overpower the desire?
The answer is found in the actions of the government or the party in China, and I call it action as what they do today is not reaction. The bulk of China has forgotten 1989 or they were not allowed to remember it. The student protest of 1989 enormous in its quantum has been very easily forgotten and not many care about it anymore. The protest is a story from the era when China was struggling thus need not be remembered. The naïve believes money is fine yet the shrewd knows a desire can be igniting thus the ban on twitter, Bing, MS live, You-Tube and so on. The shrewd knows desire is powerful thus the patrolling at the Tiananmen Square and the guidelines to TV and print to avoid mentioning history. So can a regime not only imprison but dictate the desire?
The strength of the Communist party has been its ability to seduce “The people” in China. They have placed a goal for the entire race, children learning English, Athletes being manufactured, strict rationing even today and more all for turning China into a great nation the greatest of them all. And when “The people” are busy racing towards the goal the party steadily compresses history, reduces the story of China to the bare minimum that it wishes. The party writes a new history of the future, does it wish to write the history of defining desires?
Will we see sometimes in the future individual, independent cohering desires shattering the delusive collective desire? Or will “The people” as they say in china, once they conclude one desire will be feed with another.
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