Let There Be Light!

Truly, it's counter-intuitive that an authoritarian-verging-on-totalitarian state would decide to relax its grip on news permitted to circulate within its borders, potentially imperilling its capacity to order affairs rigidly and without due thought to the harm that may result to its population. China is determined to eventually reach that desirable place in its history where it can boast that it has achieved complete social harmony.

And to achieve that end, whenever dissent rears its ugly head, the government in Beijing is quick to employ a hammer to bang the resistance back into the framework of complacency, acceptance of whatever it is government orders. Whether it is battling the breakaway aspirations of a Muslim minority, or the desire for autonomy of the people of Tibet, China strikes hard to effect accord. It sees threats inherent in the collective of a quietly devout group like the Falun Gong.

The communist ideology rejects religion, just as under its rigid structure of communism China rejected its long and glorious traditions, its culture, its Buddhist past. Only now is China beginning to understand how much it owes to its past, and respect for that past has become a new government initiative. Just as China has been able to identify the advances available to her through the acceptance of her own style of capitalism.

Yet its need to rigidly control everything that occurs within its borders enslaves it in a rictus of paranoia. Smiling to the world at large, and slamming its fist in closure on internal dissent. Threatening Taiwan on the one hand, and holding out a welcome of Big Brother on the other, planning all the while to eventually draw it into its control. During the Cultural Revolution China was driven to mass tragedy, imposing a will on its people that destroyed millions.

What an impressive sea change in the last few decades. Having much to contend with in providing for a country with the largest population in the world, governance can never be a light burden, and never could it be possible to control all the many ills of society, nor render to the people all that they feel entitled to. But in many areas it cannot be denied that China is trying to fulfil its destiny as a reasonably decent country - while yet failing in others.

A population of 1.3-billion people cannot result in a complacent populace. There will always be something wrong, something of great moment to destroy the peoples' confidence in their government. Whether it's a tardy and inadequate response to a natural disaster, or the perception that the vast countryside's needs are second place to that of the huge and many metropolises in the country, people resist conformity and complain when expectations are not met.

China has admitted to the outside world that all is not yet paradise there. Almost 90,000 riots take place in the country every year. There are millions of people who are unemployed, despite China's emerging economic miracle, now stuttering in a backlash of the international financial collapse. But Beijing finally understands that a boiling kettle with no escape for steam will soon explode.

China is now ready to allow its citizens to vent their frustrations. Its ministry of propaganda - now that's some title - has been authorized to loosen control of the news. The country's president, Hu Jintao, visiting the offices of the 'People's Daily', the government's official newspaper, has announced that the growing incidence of "large-scale public incidents" must be "accurately, objective and uniformly reported, with no tardiness, deception, incompleteness or distortion".

Amazing.