In 1989, Chinese university students started a protest in Tiananmen, right at the heart of the political centre of China in Beijing. They demanded for democracy and were swiftly clamped down by the military. In 2020, Hong Kong started a protest against the enforcing of political will of Beijing onto Hong Kong. The ringleader was also a university student. Throughout history, we have seen many protests started by university students, demanding certain changes from the ruling government.
This will be a short piece, scaled down to a level which may impact some of us as this topic is generally good for general knowledge only. After talking about the politics and current affairs for some time, I will start going back to the things which matter to us more in our daily lives. If you noticed, the past few articles connect to each other to create a flow to tell a bigger story.
Across the world, university students are always made use of to start a protest or a rebellion. University students are educated, and being young they are idealistic and full of energy, at the same time inexperienced about the reality of the world. They are the perfect group to be manipulated. Brainwashed by the foreign media they have come into contact with, they sought to right the evil and the wrongs in their own country, believing that a foreign system is superior. Of course I am not saying that their own country is flawless. Many times it contains a major flaw in itself, but just as many times were a small issue blown out of proportions.
To put it in a very blunt and simplistic way, it is like a man finding his imperfect wife to be full of flaws because he knew her too well. Then the man saw another woman outside and thought of her as someone perfect in every way. This can happen to women who are sick of their husbands too. But the underlying principle is still the same: Nobody is perfect, you know very well the flaws within the system you are in, but failed to see the rotten parts in another system concealed underneath the make-up while standing from afar. I do not deny some systems are so screwed up it is better to do away with it, but it is important to know which is which.
However, such protests, although sometimes proudly called a revolution by the protesters themselves, are not revolutions at all. In the case of the 2020 Hong Kong protests, they are simply protests which escalated into indiscriminate violence in the name of revolution. Revolutions are essentially no different from civil wars, an internal war to fight for control of the country and to run it the way they want it. War requires a lot of preparation. War has casualties. War is fought on the basis of violence and deception, and whoever is able to execute a bigger violence and deception wins. That is why there is the term ‘revolutionary army’.
Revolutions are fought with the best of people, with both sides pitting their intellect, their experience, their guts, their resources, their strategy and their ideals against the other, and in the process sacrificing themselves should the time comes for it. Revolutions are filled with blood, tears and sweat of people giving their all for the greater cause. Should one does not have the ability to lead a war, nor the preparedness to die for it, then one’s so-called revolution is simply playing house. A failed rebellion or revolution can result in execution on grounds of treason for all the higher ranking rebels.
That is why such protests organised by students were clamped down easily, creating a disturbance to the government yet in the end unable to achieve anything. Unfortunately, despite what many university students think, being part of the student councillor board does not give you outstanding working ability in terms of planning, coordination, tactics and execution. That is just something the universities smoke the naive students to make them contribute to the school for free. Your future employers will not even bother if you are in some student council in school, but how much actual work experience (part-time, internships) and skills you have. Just having some textbook knowledge does not make you part of the knowledgeable, unfortunately. Faced with overwhelming power of the system, grit and intelligence of the people who climbed to the top with tears, sweat and blood of themselves and of others, the students are doomed to fail. Should any student think that by their hands they can change the world, it would be good for them to correct their thinking before they die. This is not the world of anime with overpowered student council.
Yet despite this, why do these students do it? Because they were manipulated by external forces. Hostile forces in an attempt to tear the country apart in order to extract out benefits in the form of money, territory, resources, political concessions, etc. These young and idealistic students want to believe they are in a position to do something. When I was young I thought I could achieve big things too. While I still have lofty goals, but the reality is most of us are doomed to be average.
If you are a university student, do not be brainwashed easily. Every country and every system has their flaws. Should one day you find that you intend to devote yourself to a cause, go in knowing full well of the consequences and be prepared to die. Die trying or die via execution.
