The thought first came to my mind as I read National Geographic magazine exclusively covering the issue of China’s development seen from the economic perspective as well as social change. It is widely known that “the Dragon’s” vast economic change has constantly stunned the world, not to mention causing environmental worry when it started to consume the amount of what US did within 20 years, in only a decade. Despite of the dynamic mentality of the people who started to be more open towards globalism, they still hold a strong value and memory of the past. This trait is even more strongly possessed by those who live in rural areas.
China was invaded by Japan in 1932, which set up a puppet regime in Manchuria. Japan even conquered larger areas within the country before it was defeated by the Allies in 1945. This past record still angers the Chinese until this very moment. One of National Geographic article covered this fact and pictured how much Chinese hate Japan. The writer who wrote the article once taught English in Guangzhou(?). Once he assigned his students an essay task entitled “Who do you hate?”. Surprisingly, quite a number of students wrote how much they hate Japanese for their invasion in the past; although some also said that they hate Americans for always being “kaipoh” of other country’s business.
I then started to think, and perhaps comparing, do we, Indonesians, possess the same traits? Parallelly, assuming that we do have the same pattern as Chinese, we should have hated the Netherland as much as how Chinese hate Japan. Or maybe it is wrong. We should have hated the Netherlands 26.92 times more than Chinese hate Japan because the Netherlands occupied us for 350 years. But do we? I am not saying that it is right about this hate-or-not thingie, but it is good to ponder: how much do we love our country. Occupation indeed still continues. Not in the form of invasion of government, but economically saying, how many companies are there digging up our soil and and extracting everything inside with so many cost for us to bear and so much profit for them to take, not to mention the cost imposed to our highly-polluted environment. Singapore, with its Temasek case; Exxon with its giant oil drilling machine sucking our oil wells, and who else can you mention?
You know what I’m thinking right now? I am/will be a puppet, human slave working for one of our invaders. Do I have a choice? Yes. Living in my beloved corrupt countries with expensive, no-loan tuition fees, much fewer jobs available and less money earned. But with tuition grant and much higher pay that I won’t get back in Indo, an effort to ease the family burden, and the promise of better financial security; do I still have a choice?
Just another random thought,
Gita
