Freedom

There is a story told in Poland about Stalin; drinking vodka late at night, thinking about Poland, and mumbling that ‘trying to get Poles to embrace communism was like trying to put a horse’s saddle on a pig’

What is more surprising to me is how anyone managed to export the ideology to the Chinese, to whom it must have seemed equally unnatural. Thousands of years of innovation, faith and dynamism swept aside to make way for the monotony of a godless, humorless autocracy. As a creative, freedom-loving nation, it must have been stifling to have every aspect of life controlled, monitored and restricted in the manner it has been during its short epoch.

During his struggle with the British Empire, Gandhi noted that the small number of colonists cannot control millions of Indians once they decided not to be controlled anymore and his non-violent invitation for the British to leave was ultimately successful.  A handful of hard line Communists are beginning to realize that too, as many of their nation’s one billion souls long to be free again.

No one in China has forgotten the Tiananmen Square massacre; the broken tip of an enormous and growing iceberg of dissent and resistance; and all eyes are now on Hong Kong to see if the people there are ready to stand firm before the vice grips of the mainland regime close in on them and on the very core of what it is to be free. 

Perhaps in our lifetime we will see the return of China to greatness having rid herself of the malaise of Mao’s failed experiment and the streets of Peking (and Hong Kong) may be lit up with the joy of freedom, an inherent gift of God, once again; but not without struggle; not without blood, I suspect.