The idea that China should have a calendar loaded with anniversaries seems entirely appropriate for a people who are reputed to think of history in cyclical rather than linear terms. The abundance of Chinese anniversaries this year is, however, an oddity, but not nearly as significant as the troublesome fact that the Chinese seem to have little in the way of shared memories about historic events. It is the 100th anniversary of the first reform movement, but there is no collective memory of that initial attempt to modernize China: it is the 80th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, but there is no popular basis for recollecting those once exciting times; it is the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC, but this only reminds people of their ambivalences about Mao's rule; it is the 20th of the Democracy Wall but no Chinese can speak loudly of that; and it is the 10th of Tiananmen and, needless to say, the regime wants to quash any memories of that event.

What is striking is not that the Chinese have so many anniversaries, but rather that they have so many blocked or repressed memories. The nature of modern Chinese politics has been such that it has been impossible for the Chinese people to collectively share their memories and meld them together to form enduring and inspiring myths for succeeding generations. The absence of a collective memory for a nation is as serious a liability as the repression of memory is for the individual. Clinical psychology tells us that repression of memory inhibits the imagination, and this in turn stifles creativity. What is true for the individual is also true for a national culture. The richness of modern Chinese history has not generated a creative process of bringing together the emotions and the imagery of collective memories to produce an inspired sense of national identity. From all of these anniversaries there are no shared symbols, common understandings or building blocks for a shared sense of national identity. Instead, the numerous repressions of collective memories have left China with an ill-formed nationalism. Without freedom for the imagination to be truly creative, the Chinese are left with a shallow, xenophobic,"we-against-them" form of nationalism.

Thus, while scholars of China can record the details of anniversary events, the Chinese people are generally left puzzled as to what they should make of their history. The hackneyed calls to carrying on the "revolution" have lost all meaning. Dwelling on humiliation has not produced collective pride. State-sponsored attempts at national mythmaking never really work, as the efforts of innumerable Third World countries prove. The uplifting visions of true national myths can only come out of the collective imaginations of a whole people who are able to build on their freely shared memories. Instead, politically China today is, in Mathew Arnold's imagery, a blocked society suspended between a world which is dead and a world which is powerless to be born.