China’s Gen Z and Millenials are giving up.
Grim prospects for the future
reveal just how badly Communism failed China.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Shelley Zhang, filling in for Chris Chappell,
who really wishes he could spend some time lying flat.
Things are going really badly for China’s youth.
Not that they’ve ever been great…
Really, at any point in time.
But now more than ever, it seems like young people in China have just given up.
First there was the lying flat movement.
It was a popular hashtag on Chinese social media that started last year. It basically
encouraged young people to give up on the intense struggle of Chinese society and just…lie flat.
I’ve never seen activists less, you know… active.
Next was the Let it Rot movement.
“‘Let it rot’ means to let things that are already beyond repair deteriorate.”
‘Let it rot’ is like lying flat but with an added level of cynicism.
One Shanghai youth described the difference like this.
“‘Lying flat’ equates to spending little effort and adopting a laid-back attitude,
whereas ‘let it rot’ means not caring whatsoever, seeing as there is nothing to be done.”
Though if this is the face of existential despair, I’m strangely okay with it.
Also, I’m pretty sure my cat adopted this policy years ago.
Apparently he’s not lazy. He’s politically motivated.
The latest term going around is ‘involution.’ Believe me, it sounds better in Chinese.
“[It] suggests a process that curls inward, ensnaring its participants within what the
anthropologist Xiang Biao has described as an ‘endless cycle of self-flagellation.’”
Which is awful. Unless you’re into that kind of thing. And if you are, please keep it to yourself.
Biao describes involution as,
“‘The experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless.’”
Basically China’s youth are in a deep spiral of nihilism.
What’s causing it? I’ll tell you more after this quick commercial break.
Welcome back.
Lying flat. Letting it Rot.
Involution. No, this isn’t the set list at a Metallica concert.
It’s how young people in China feel about their future.
Why does it look like China’s youth have just given up?
Well, the short answer is the Chinese Communist Party completely screwed up China’s economy.
The Party has total control over society, including the economy.
And when that happens, things actually tend to go poorly.
You never hear people talking about how much they love their dictator.
Actually, you do… but mostly so they don’t
get laid flat and left to rot permanently.
China made rapid economic growth by becoming the world’s factory.
Of course that meant people working long hours in unsafe conditions
with ironically no right to unionize, plus massive pollution.
But the Chinese Communist Party had bigger plans.
They didn’t want China to just make all the world’s cheap crap.
They want China to dominate high-tech industries as well.
That’s… quite the range. That’d be like if McDonald’s suddenly
wanted to get into Michelin star-rated sushi.
They called their plan Made in China 2025,
The goal? “Transform China from a manufacturing giant into a world manufacturing power.”
Which sounds almost like the same thing. State-run media: using lots of words to say nothing.
The Communist Party pushed a landmark urbanization plan.
250 million people were pushed into cities. Looks fun doesn’t it??
But the Party also needed highly educated people living in those cities. So in 2013,
there was a massive push to create college graduates.
“The government’s annual public education spending grew from 1.7% of GDP to around 4% in 2021,
or $557 billion.”
Now the investment seemingly paid off.
In 1990, there were half a million college graduates.
This summer, a record 10.8 million graduated from university.
Now that may all sound like a good idea. In the US, people always talk about how we
need to invest more in education. China clearly has the right idea.
The problem is this growth was artificially created by a communist government’s directives,
and not by market conditions. There aren’t nearly enough jobs for all these graduates.
Could you possibly imagine graduating from college with a degree that’s completely useless?
Besides all you liberal arts majors out there. I know you know how that feels.
China’s youth unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 19.3 percent.
By comparison, youth unemployment in the US is 8.1%.
Part of the reason there aren’t enough white collar jobs is because , you guessed it,
state intervention in the economy.
“In the last two years, the Chinese authorities have hit industries—from
technology to education and real estate—with tough, new rules intended to rein in private firms
and maintain ‘social harmony.’ The result? Companies lost money and shed jobs.”
In July of last year, the Party all but banned private tutoring companies.
In Beijing alone, 90% of off campus tutoring companies went out of business.
That was a $120 billion dollar industry
and a major source of jobs for recent college graduates. Gone.
Now they’re lucky if they can find work making fancy sushi at McDonald’s.
A crackdown on video games led to 14,000 gaming-related firms shutting down.
Again, jobs that would have gone to these graduates.
On top of that,
millions of small businesses have gone under thanks to the Party's Zero-Covid policy.
And due to all sorts of government restrictions and funding challenges,
it’s extremely hard for a recent college graduate to start their own business.
This has led to a hyper competitive job market,
where people fight for jobs that are increasingly miserable.
Take the case of Pinduoduo , an online grocery shopping startup. It was allegedly making people
work 300 hours a month. Standard business hours only make up 160 hours per month.
Then some of their workers died, and it created a big backlash.
But it also created some job openings. Mind showing the boss my resume?
This job market is nuts.
But outside of extreme examples like Pinduoduo ,
There’s “the Chinese work practice known as ‘996.’”
That’s 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-days-a-week.
One Chinese college student told Fortune, “So many of my peers are struggling to find
even their first job. Or if they had one, some quit because they were burnt out.”
“Chinese society says you can only be successful if you go to a good school,
get a high-paying and high-status job and buy a home. But it seems almost impossible now.”
Now you might be getting a sense of why fatalistic social movements
like lying flat, letting it rot, and involution are becoming so popular.
And here’s another factor adding to the problem. On top of there not being enough jobs,
there’s also not enough women. Thanks to decades of the One Child policy and
sex-selective abortion, there are 30 million more men than women.
A large body of unmarried, unemployed men?
That’s like having an entire society of nihilistic Cosmo Kramers.
LIfe is meaningless, Jerry. Meaningless!
The Communist Party is definitely concerned. Chinese leader Xi
Jinping himself has talked about the dangers of lying flat and involution.
Xi knows the dangers of getting stuck in a hole.
From personal experience.
In a speech last year Xi said, “It is necessary to…form an environment for improvement in which
everyone participates, avoiding involution and lying flat.”
Besides the obvious problems,
China is also facing an extreme shortage of workers for blue-collar manufacturing jobs.
According to China’s Ministry of Education, by 2025, they’re going to be 30 million people short.
The Chinese Communist Party has dug a pretty big hole for themselves.
Figuratively, of course, since they don’t have enough blue collar workers to literally dig holes.
And now there’s only one solution—dig their way out! It’s time for more state intervention!
“Mentions of lying flat, letting it rot,
and involution are heavily censored on Chinese social media.”
Surely if young people are forbidden from expressing their dissatisfaction,
they won’t be dissatisfied anymore!
The Party is also encouraging college graduates to go work in the countryside.
And for those of you keeping track, in the 60’s and 70’s the Communist Party also forced young
people to go to the countryside, although that was because Mao believed sending the
youth to learn from the peasants was good for their ideological education.
That’s what happened to my parents, in fact. I guess the Party is getting back to its roots.
With the Chinese Communist Party endlessly spinning its wheels,
perhaps the only solution—is to lie flat for a while.
And China Uncensored would not be possible without the support from viewers like you.
As a thank you to fans who contribute on our crowd funding platform on Patreon, or
our exclusive social media platform on Locals, we answer their questions at the end of each episode.
Today’s question comes from, Gregory Zeigler. “If I went to live in Taiwan before they get invaded,
will I as a foreigner be allowed to help defend the country?
By the way, would I be allowed in at all if I have lived in the PRC.
So first of all Greg, you would be allowed in to Taiwan if you’ve
lived in mainland China before. Many Taiwanese have lived in mainland China.
Now if you were living in Taiwan and war with China broke out, what would happen?
Well, I’m sure there would be an effort from the embassy of whatever country you’re from to get
its citizens out, just like we saw when Russia invaded Ukraine. But if you wanted to stay and
help with the war effort, I can’t imagine a scenario where Taiwan wouldn’t want your help.
That doesn’t necessarily mean frontline fighting. It could be behind the scenes medical work,
helping refugees, any number of things. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that point anytime soon.
Countries around the world should be supporting Taiwan now, before war breaks out.
Thanks for your question and your support Gregory. And if you want to
be like Gregory and support the show, visit Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored.
Contribute a dollar or more per episode. We rely on you to help us keep making episodes like this.
Once again, I’m Shelley Zhang. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.