In China, the "blind date", a social engagement between two people who have never seen or met before, usually organized by a common knowledge, it is a concept that many young people today rely on to find their “perfect match”. In this way both families benefit from their exchange of capital. Basically, men and women are traditionally expected to have the same social class, wealth, education, and appearance when dating (The Chinadaily, 2017). However, in the face of social pressure and family expectations, marriage can become a material transaction by choosing one's personal objective circumstance over long-term emotional satisfaction. The purpose of this essay is to retrace the historical reasons of this typical Chinese culture and analyze the social discourse constructed by hidden power using Foucault's theory on "Discipline and Punishment". The essay will first focus on the postmodern context to analyze this theory. Second, it will evaluate the current state of marriage in China in terms of the prevailing phenomenon of “blind dates” and go on to discuss the historical reason and how people become trapped in those social discourses, firmly constructed by power. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In postmodern times, power is gradually exercised through stimulation rather than repression. Therefore, people are dominated to tell the truth. According to Foucault (1972), power permeates through knowledge and continues to have an enormous influence on people's cognition through the use of specialized languages ​​or information, which he calls “discourses” (ibid). Within this process, disciplines involving power become a mechanism that operates in numerous micro-practices and causes people to enter into self-regulation (Foucault, 1979). The reference to Jeremy Bentham's “Panopticon” reveals that power can be visible but uncertain; forces poisoners to regulate their behavior. The simplest comparison between the traditional explanation of power and that of Foucault appeared in his “Discipline and Punish”: We must stop once and for all describing the effects of power in negative terms: it “excludes”, “represses”, “ censors', 'abstracts', 'masks', 'hides'. Indeed, power produces; produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that can be gained from him belong to this production. (Foucault 1979:194)Foucault (1979) indicates that modern power does not reinforce the conquest of the human body, it establishes a relationship to make people more useful and more submissive through social discourse. Similarly, Shilling (2003) suggests that authority can gain greater control through the discourse of knowledge. In terms of marriage, it is consistently considered a necessary experience to find a “perfect match” by a certain age and responsible for social reproduction. Those outside this condition will feel the pressure to make themselves suitable to avoid being different. Consequently, power is no longer a negative notion, but a positive productive force. Although Chinese marriage patterns have changed in modern times, belief in the “perfect match” metanarrative is still deeply rooted in social discourse. Sandy (2015) concluded that it is true that there were indeed alternative forms of relationships to traditional marriage that today's men and women could choose from, such as cohabitation, open marriage, committed relationship but not marriage. However,Some single Chinese continue to struggle with marital problems, facing great pressure from their families and even society as a whole. A recent survey on Chinese marriage on the Tecent website (2017) shows that there is a growing number of young people who have hesitation or a negative attitude towards marriage. However, almost 60% of the respondents especially the parents' generation insist that getting married is necessary throughout life (ibid). As reported by Chinadaily (2017), every weekend, parents gather around the “blind date corner,” hoping to find the perfect match for their single adult child. They lay out pieces of paper listing their children's material assets in every aspect, from educational qualifications to family registration and personal wealth, which are common guidelines for looking for matches. Obviously, those labels form an invisible classification system. According to this article, people who have Beijing Hukou (registered resident), well-educated and own a personal house in the main district of Beijing will be ranked at the highest level and will also be considered a suitable competitive candidate to be a suitable daughter and son-in-law. -law. Therefore, marriages become a pursuit of materialism and transform into a quantifiable transaction, within which individuals are divided into different levels that satisfy the selection mechanism constructed by social discourse. In other words, as indicated by Foucault (1979), the subject is not an autonomous individual, but becomes a product of the social structures on which our personal identity is based. The concept of the “perfect match” is based on the long idealized Chinese tradition of continuing the family lineage. Although social discourses seem to be different from the historical period to modern times, it can be seen that personal beliefs and desires towards marriage are inevitably associated with hidden power. In the story, children's marriage had to be arranged by their parents. The “perfect match” in imperial marriage policies was closely related to political purpose; it was used to improve political control or to gain greater access to political power. In recent times, arranged marriages still exist, the main participants in the "blind date corner" are those people born in the 1950s-1960s and who became parents in the 1980s (The Chinadaily, 2017). they tend to see marriage as a way to improve the quality of life and social class of their children through the “Perfect Match”. As Ebrey (1991) points out, every marriage has the potential to change both the economic and social situation, concluding that "marriage, in effect, becomes part of the system of social reproduction in which differences in status, rank and class are transferred to the next generation” (1991:2). However, these parents mentioned above are the generation that typically arises from the social transition, so they are called the generation of the deprived. Basically, they experienced a childhood with material scarcity and the movement of urban youth educated Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement (Wikipedia, 2009) also encountered birth control after getting married. Therefore, they are desperately anxious to improve the status of their children (especially girls) or at least consolidate theirs social class through a “Perfect Match” spouse. Evidently, marriage can be seen as a reflection of the economic and social situation. Indeed, after the abolition of feudal marriage by the government in May 1950, people were believed to have escaped the dominated traditional marriage.