China’s Slacker Youths: Why They Went From 'Lying Flat' To 'Let It Rot' | Insight | Full Episode

There is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction brewing among young people in China. A new phenomenon called bailan, which means "let it rot," has some 200,000 members in related online forums and the growth of this movement is a pushback against the competitive rat race in China as China struggles with its zero. -Covets politics, a slow economy and almost 20 percent unemployment among young people. Could these unmotivated young Chinese jeopardize Sitting Ping's vision of a rejuvenated China? If Dancing continues, there will be a lot of turbulence in China, so Lee Selin works at his uncle's store in Beijing. Factory vehicle inspection six days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Checks for mechanical failures such as fuel system leaks or worn tires and minor repairs such as changing oil or filters. The high school graduate is sociable and gets along very well with his colleagues - workers, but when it comes to the work itself, he is indifferent in this 25-year-old young man. The lack of motivation extends to other aspects of his life. He is very aware of the social phenomenon. They dance to let him rot. He admits that he has a pilon attitude. Chinese gaming communities in early 2022 saw it as the spiritual successor to an earlier movement known as tanping or

lying

down, so to understand bailan we have to look at tan ping, a social phenomenon that took China by storm in 2021.

Here's something a blogger posted. In April last year, on Baidu, the publication called on young people who are the engine of the country's growth to opt out of the fight for success in the workplace, tamp or lie, promises to free themselves from the burden of life where competition is relentless, this post

went

viral and claimed. The media was quick to launch a series of rebuttals. The manipulation search functions of WeChat and Doban were disabled. So why did the manipulation resonate with young Chinese? The idea of ​​tang ping is actually quite universal in the sense that many young people are tired of the type of games that society apparently asks them to participate in and are not too interested in this type of competition, since you know, and

they

prefer a different kind of lifestyle, the number of graduates you know from universities and college.

The degrees are something like 10 million, of course, this year is quite challenging in the sense that there are so many college graduates and jobs are scarce, you know, the competition is intense, that's why I say that, uh, uh, The idea that I don't want to participate in this kind of competition, I want to tamp, okay, is a lie that the covert pandemic of '19 has dragged into 2022. The Chinese authorities were determined to maintain their zero coverup policy. The economy bore the brunt of such widespread and repeated lockdowns that economists estimated China was losing $45 billion in GDP per month as the major centers of Xinjiang, Shanghai and Beijing closed one by one.

A record 10.8 million graduates are expected to join the workforce this year, even as youth unemployment sits at 18.4 percent, perhaps because of this. dark economic mood the relatively benign weather is degenerating into a more cynical manipulation of bailan means I can't really move up the ladder I'm just trying to save myself by minimizing my social activity and my economic activities by them basically saying no to the system I won't cooperate Don't even bother listening to you I just try to have my own style and then I have my own antisocial behavior because lunging is even worse than tamping so that's why Chinese leaders really care about this trend from xialin.

He says it wasn't always like this after finishing high school he had high hopes of finding a good job and earning a living abroad. Foreign stories of young people like Celine who are unmotivated and indifferent are not new in almost all nations, societies and generations. They have their own share of what we call lazy, but for China it is also considered a rejection of the country's economic direction and the authorities are taking note In May 2022, President Xi Jinping gave an important speech on the centenary of the 4th movement of May. and the focus was squarely on young Chinese, the May 4 movement is an important milestone in Chinese history, commemorating the 1919 student uprising against imperialism and marking the spread of communism in his speech c urged young people to focus on the country and not just on personal goals in each society young people will think that older people are actually consuming all kinds of resources.

Older people will think that young people are lazy, you are not contributing to society, but in China this is a slightly different thing because it is something that has already been there. For a while people could see that there was a lot of frustration among users, that's why he especially mentioned the importance of youth and also the future. Guan Isis is an independent private tutor, her schedule is leisurely and she does not teach more than two classes per week. The next day, she

went

to a public park to enjoy her favorite pastime, skateboarding. In August 2021, Chinese authorities launched a broad crackdown on private and online tuition that eliminated approximately three million jobs. job.

Private tutors like Isis were directly affected by losing many students. and a large portion of her income, but instead of finding a side job, Isis spends four to five hours at the skate park each day, which would seem unusually relaxed for a 29-year-old single college graduate living in one of the most expensive cities in China, surely over time it was common and I could work up to 15 hours a day and see learning abroad. The same feeling as Aizu Thailan is a personal choice and no one should judge him for this, but there are some who are baffled by the pylon generation.

The attitude of generation It happened in the intervening years. between generation As of 1976, GDP never grew more than 2 percent. Almost 30 years after establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949, the economy was unproductive. GDP per capita income was $165 in 1976. After Mao's death in 1976, Tong Xiaoping became supreme leader in 1978. He launched a series of far-reaching market reforms that would transform China from an isolated, impoverished state to becoming the world's second-largest economy. He instituted the open door policy that allowed foreign direct investment in China from 1978 to 2013. The economy grew by an average of 9.5. percent a year, a pace described by the World Bank as the fastest sustained expansion of a major economy in history, things help encourage people to work hard to try to get as rich as

they

can to be the first group of people to get rich.

In China, that kind of energy releases the passion and motivation of a group of people who have been repressed during the cultural revolution, so they particularly value the opportunity that lay on the back of that dynamic energy which in turn described bookworm Jorong as a young adult at that time found his calling and fortune after graduating from university joe taught high school mathematics for 10 years the turning point came in 1993 abroad to allow a few people get rich first open the floodgates of Chinese entrepreneurial drive they can work hard they can actualize their dream is especially material because before, during the cultural revolution and before the majority of Chinese people were truly poor, they attribute their entrepreneurial success to the vast opportunities available during the Tang era Japan, when there was less speed of growth and expansion of the country.

The Chinese economy was difficult to sustain and since 2010 China's double-digit gdp growth has slowed from over 10.6 percent in 2010 to around 6 percent in 2019 and this fell to 2.3 percent when The pandemic hit in 2020, but even as the Chinese economy grew so did inequality. China's genius coefficient, which measures income distribution, is more unequal than that of most Western countries. I would say that the thirst for open doors is very good and purchases had many reforms in China also very good, but at that time I would say. Many people made a mistake, they think that the market economy can solve everything, but they ignore social development, they ignore social welfare and then they develop anti-social welfare sentiment.

I think the line threat phenomenon didn't just start last year or the year before. There, for a while, many observers have already noted that social immobility in China has been a problem since the early 2000s, not just in the last two or three years, because many Chinese suffer from it and call it the burden of the three mountains. The three mountains refer to education. healthcare and housing between 2004 and 2013, average housing prices grew 17 per year, but income grew only 11 in the same period, in the first-tier city of Shanghai alone, between 2000 and 2010, the price index Shanghai housing soared 121 percent, the real estate bubble really makes society very driven largely by real estate in

flat

ion, so many young people can't afford to buy a flag because their salary wouldn't actually allow them afford an apartment, their education problem they have for children to cultivate them, they will feel that the tuition will be very substantial for them, a particularly private tuition, some people told me that even a personal tutor could charge you much more, like 800 to 1000 Singapore dollars.

It's amazing that these types of people, in particular, don't get a decent sale. The problem of aging is irreversible. In China, people are receiving. old, so medical costs will increase, I am not very sure that this current generation can earn the same money as their parents, so they need to have a lot of money for the future, then the anxiety level will be very very high. Wang, 25 years old. yandong works in healthcare management in Beijing it was not his first career choice as he studied engineering at university um life in the big city has not turned out to be any better rosas he has been here for almost five years and feels that he is further away from his original goals that before and happy to make the minimum effort foreign foreign foreign foreign this indifferent attitude is a far cry from Joron's experience in the 1990s which is a tidal wave of such media dance to let it rot on the Chinese network right now but Due to Chinese censorship of words like tamping and dance, it is difficult to truly assess how widespread the phenomenon is and experts warn that it is not fair to paint all of Chinese Gen Z with the same brush, something that would not describe the majority of Young.

People in China, that's just not the case, most people are still trying to make the most of what they can. You know, given the opportunities that there are, uh, young people and, more importantly, what do they think of each other? It's almost 9 p.m. on the streets of the city of Beijing. It's still a busload of traffic and activity, but it's noticeably smaller than it was before global pandemic outbreaks of the highly infectious Covet 19 omicron variant triggered disruptive

episode

s of capital city closures and reopenings for twenty-eight years. old zhang ying chu has just returned home after almost 12 hours in the office the insurance agent is not done with his work yet he is investigating some details she thrives on the demanding hours and is proudly associated with the 996 culture working 9 to. m. to 9 00 p. m. six days a week, um, foreign, the term 996 and overtime culture have a long history in Chinese IT companies, they focus on productivity and cost reduction.

Proponents of the 996 culture include Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and jd.com CEO Richard Liu, a website called 996.icu was created to encourage workers to upload their work hours. that reveal the hours of punishment. About 110 Chinese IT companies are listed on this whistleblowing site, including Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu. This is some kind of phenomenon of developing countries wanting to catch up so they can work very hard, these catch-up effects occur in many contexts, so generally everyone tries their best to have a much better position. better in a society,so everyone tried to work hard to have this kind of mentality called 996. the ethic of effort Work was the backbone on which China built its economic miracle in the 1980s and 1990s, during the era of market reforms of Deng Xiaoping.

Jorong, 63, prospered during that period long before the 996 mandate became popular. He shares the view that hard work is praiseworthy. The move is seen as a rejection of the 996 work ethic of the past. 996 means they sell them, they say no to bosses, they like to respond to bosses' requests, which is why you can see older people in China. This generation even they work very hard but now the younger generations know how to protect themselves because after all they don't believe that they work hard and can have a better future so they would rather enjoy their lives so what do the followers of the 996, the work culture thinks about the dancing movement is that everyone who has identified themselves as dancing does not agree with them, their personal happiness comes first, now we are really reaching that stage in which the lives of the People can improve with higher quality and less focus on getting rich, you know, and that's why these young people, a lot of these young people who may mirror you, know that they're actually pretty smart, you know, because they think that just trying to making an extra bucket is not the main purpose of life.

I know there is something else they are accomplishing in different areas, but if Bailon is simply a passive social movement, why are the Chinese authorities nervous about it in the May 4 movement's important anniversary speech this year, President Xi Jinping tried hard to send a strong message of empowerment to young Chinese. Young people will take charge of China's future eventually, so it is important for him to give young people the encouragement that Xi Jinping doesn't want. someone is very authoritarian and doesn't want to seem too paternalistic, so the idea is to give them a sense of empowerment and I think that's important because only when people feel empowered do they have this positive attitude towards life. and that will make life worth living and make China more competitive to address the social immobility and lack of opportunity that is causing Bailan's despondent attitude.

Chinese leaders acted to level the playing field. The presidency launched a common prosperity campaign in August 2021. Its main goal was to reduce the wealth gap between the rich and the poor and ensure that China's progress is inclusive and not competition means that, because of the pie, everyone they are not big, so everyone tries to compete for a very small slice or pie, so everyone tries very hard, parents try very hard to raise their children, then they try to get a better higher education, then they try to have a better job , the main problem is that the resources are not big, the pie is not big enough, so we really can't have more than the problem.

To reduce income inequality and also social mobility, a series of repressive measures were imposed on multiple fronts to reduce inequality. Big tech companies were hit with heavy fines for monopolistic practices and leading billionaires were humiliated. Companies were instructed to give more back to society in the form of private online charitable education accessible to wealthy parents who can afford to give their children a head start. This was seen as a way to level the playing field in terms of education. Property ownership was a major sticking point for the half- and half-knots. scrutiny to cool the red-hot real estate sector the government raised interest rates and restricted working capital for real estate developers even 996 culture was criticized the 996 working hours system was declared illegal by China's supreme people's court in August 2021, so clearly youth discontent is a cause for concern among Chinese leaders, especially at a time when a slow curve recovery and a housing bubble threatened to derail the Chinese economy.

The government definitely doesn't like people to manipulate them. It's like a father is right. I don't want their children to trample, the government doesn't want their people to trample because their people are a very important workforce, especially for the young generation, the hope of the future country. I understand that the authorities think that if there is too much talk about tamping and then people can see that as a new lifestyle that is encouraged it becomes a fad, you know, when it becomes a type of culture that would damage the perspective of people, it would limit people's perspective, this is something that I think the Chinese leadership suwari much more because a line thread means that I just take care of myself I won't actually do anything I couldn't buy an apartment so why I don't just enjoy my life and have a lot of entertainment but that means I wouldn't like to do my best, I would just try my best The worst thing, yes, in general it is a loser culture in China.

I don't want to be a good student. I just want to be a bad student. So please don't touch me. It is a powerful rebellion. It's part of saying no. However, for the government, fears of a large social movement and unrest are exaggerated. Juan Eisen, twenty-nine years old, feels that the authorities have nothing to worry about. I don't think his attitude will be a problem for China or abroad for now. at least they dance is still largely confined to the online sphere, seen as a relatively marginal movement, but it's something I'm intentionally not doing its job, but China has a large workforce.

So why do people buy land? Why do some people buy land? There is fierce competition in the job market and in education, which means that there is still a large group of people who work very hard to ensure China's economic development, but I am sure it is a small group of people, but given the greatest ability of China's population would not only threaten Chinese economic development I do not see that dancing is a social phenomenon I see it simply as the type of thinking of some people that characterizes some people and it is not the entire generation that we should No I generalize so I don't worry about it, but I think the authorities should address the problem by confronting them and I think the signs so far are quite positive for China, especially compared to other countries.

China is doing well.