Chinese Millennials' Lay Flat::
A Silent Revolution
BY RHEA LOUIS / 2 OCTOBER, 2021
Exhausted by a culture of hard work with seemingly less reward, young people in China are highlighting the need for a change in lifestyle by ‘lying flat’.
hina has marked its huge global presence through not only its vast populace and large physical size, but by also being one of the world’s fastest growing economies. The average growth rate of the real annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the country through 2018, was recorded to be 9.5%, a pace which was described by the World Bank as, “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history” and was a result of their strong productivity growth, spurred by the 1978 market-oriented reforms. Although, a generation ago, “hardwork” was the road to success for China, today, the new movement, termed as tǎng píng, which means ‘to lay flat’, has led to a reigning sense of professional as well as social stagnation.
C
The tǎng píng movement is a mindset, a personal choice and a lifestyle for the Chinese youth protesting against the prevalent hyper competitive work environment, termed as neijuan, and the 996 regimes, which means working from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. The movement encourages an almost monastic outlook since it embraces the ideas of not getting married, not having children, not having a job, consuming as little as possible and not owning property.
Pictured: Title unknown via Wikipedia
For many, this is almost the only way to fight against the growing pressures from long work hours, skyrocketing housing prices, and the ever-higher cost of raising children in an authoritarian country.
The population of people above 60 years of age grew to 264 million, up by 18.7% from last year and the fertility rate showed 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone, a pattern that resembles the ageing societies of Japan and Italy.
According to local media reports, the unemployment rate among the 16-24 age group in the country stands at 13.1% whereas the overall unemployment rate is 5.5%. In addition to this, the population of people above 60 years of age grew to 264 million, up by 18.7% from last year and the fertility rate showed 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone, a pattern that resembles the ageing societies of Japan and Italy. This has rung a shrill alarm for the Chinese policymakers, alerting them that the world's second-biggest economy has entered an irreversible pattern of population decline and Beijing is certainly not happy.
Pictured: Illustration by Drew Shannon via Pinterest
The movement gained traction in April when a now deleted post by Luo Huazhong titled “Lying Flat is Justice'', went viral. The post read, “I haven’t been working for two years, I have just been hanging around and I don’t see anything wrong with this'' and showcased him on his bed in a dark room with the curtains down after he quit his job as a factory worker and decided to pursue odd jobs and survive on his savings. Soon, the post became a broader statement about the Chinese society and was celebrated as an anti-consumerist manifesto by Chinese millennials.
This is not the first time that China’s tech workers have rebelled against their toxic work environments. In 2019, an online campaign called ‘996.ICU’ was initiated to draw attention to certain Chinese tech companies with extreme work cultures and to seek emergency medical treatment for work-related health crises. However, this movement was shrugged off and countered by the company bosses by saying, “How can you achieve the success you want if you don’t put in more effort and time than others?”
This has resulted, according to The Washington Post, a 9000 member ‘lying flat community’ to be censored and other tang píng forums to be barred.
The Chinese leaders urging self-reliance in science and technology and focusing on domestic consumption as the primary driver of growth have encountered this movement to be a form of resistance since the engines of the domestic boom, being young workers, professionals and middle-class Chinese, have opted to “lay down” instead. Thus, proving to be a threat to the ambition of a so-called ‘New Era’ of the now Chinese President, Xi Jinping. This has resulted, according to The Washington Post, a 9000 member ‘lying flat community’ to be censored and other tǎng píng forums to be barred. In addition to this, Taobao, the popular online shopping platform run by tech giant Alibaba, where t-shirts related to “lying down” were sold, was shut down and the search function for ‘lying flat’ on WeChat, where the term was trending, was disabled. The Chinese state-run media followed up by rebuking the movement by saying that while people were allowed to resign themselves to misery, they were not allowed to lie down.
The disastrous event of the shrinking Chinese working age population deciding not to work at all, is something that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is trying to avoid. Studies have observed that, with the one-child policy in place, the younger generation has been guaranteed financial support from not only their parents but also four grandparents which has aided in the change in mindset of these young millennials. For instance, Zhang, a 27-year-old student from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, resorted to ‘lying flat’ after he was tired of witnessing sons of businessmen and daughters of officials get a head start in the process of job-hunting through fundings and recommendations and hence decided to resign from his job, and sustain on the USD 800, excluding rent, provided to him by his parents.
The country eased into a two-child policy in 2015 and has now introduced the three-child policy in 2021. However, procreation could not be further from the minds of the young Chinese and has been met with ridicule due to the increasingly unaffordable costs associated with it.
Pictured: Picture by Juanf Hernandez via Pinterest
Over the decades, China’s rise was powered by millions of individual strivers who believed their progress and that of the country’s were interlinked. However, many young people, today, see the progress of the country diverging from the advancement of their own life. As the generation that built China starts to age and the younger people see diminishing returns on their hard work, will this sort of silent apathetic movement of disenchantment grow?
Keywords
tang ping movement,monastic outlook, unemployment, population decline, anti-consumerist manifesto, self reliance, domestic consumption,Chinese Communist Party(CCP), three-child policy
References
Teh, C. (2021, June 8). More and more chinese 20-somethings are rejecting the rat race AND 'LYING FLAT' after watching their friends work themselves to death. Insider. https://www.insider.com/disenchanted-chinese-youth-join-a-mass-movement-to-lie-flat-2021-6.
Bandurski, D. (2021, July 8). The 'lying Flat' movement standing in the way of China's Innovation drive. Brookings.
Chaturvedi, A. (2021, July 6). 'Lying flat' gains traction in China as youngsters Defy norms, Beijing not happyAmit. Hindustan Times.
Song, Z. (2021, July 7). Chinese millennials are giving up the rat race TO 'LIE FLAT'. The Daily Beast.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-lying-flat-took-chinas-overworked-millennials-by-storm.
Hu, Z., & Khan, M. S. (n.d.). Economic issues 8 -- why is china growing so fast? International Monetary Fund.
DISCOVER MORE STORIES
A Bigger Slice Of The Tax Pie?
SEPTEMBER 25
BY AADRIKA SHUKLA
An Inquiry Into Gentrified Mumbai
SEPTEMBER 18
BY KENISHA MARTINS
Are We Truly Rational Consumers?
SEPTEMBER 11
BY DRISHTI RANA
The views published in this journal are those of the individual author/s and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the team behind Beyond Margins, or the Department of Economics of Sophia College for Women (Autonomous), or Sophia College for Women (Autonomous) in general. The list of sources may not be exhaustive. If you’d like to have the complete list, email us at beyondmarginssophia@gmail.com