National Student Physical Fitness Test and Absolute Power
2017
Universities in China require students to finish the national student physical fitness test every year. In 2017, I volunteered to assist with this annual mission. While working on the tests, I took some pictures of the students. The students were photographed during their height evaluations as an experiment.
However, none of them resisted or doubted the camera in front of them. I wondered why we in China are so used to public cameras, monitorship and surveillance. I see it as domesticated by authoritarianism. I told people to stand and gave them instructions. I was a staff member, so I had the power, and no one resisted. The same situations are happening in China every day; the gate guards think they have authority, and abuse their power.
This reminds me a lot of a SS concentration camp guard in post-WWII Germany. When someone “ordinary” is empowered as a part of the authority, this ordinary person starts to feel a sense of duty to serve the party they belong to. In a daily context, people are so easy to fall into a pitfall to follow what the guard told them, and we have to ask if they have permission, or if it is outside their jurisdiction. Education of knowing our own rights is neccessary and when we have power, be sure we’re aware of it and be conscious of our decisions.