A cluster of buzzwords for "anti-work neologisms".
When a phrase becomes popular, it's often because the new word fills a space that is uncertain but yet to be spoken. Many people in the workplace are looking for an accurate way to describe the pressures they face: wanting to be financially secure but not wanting to let work take over their lives, having severe status anxiety and feeling guilty about it, sometimes wanting to get a promotion and sometimes quitting their job, sometimes dreaming of a life ahead of their predecessors, and sometimes feeling that they are destined to be the first generation to be worse off than their parents.
Thanks to the advent of Generation Z, "quiet quitting" has become the latest buzzword in the United States. The term has spread from TikTok to mainstream media, describing employees who only meet the bare minimum requirements of their job and never put in more time, effort, or enthusiasm than that requires. Therefore, this statement is somewhat untrue, because employees do not really leave their positions, but choose to do the bare minimum work to make ends meet, and continue to receive their share of wages. In fact, it is more similar to the common "fishing" in the Chinese workplace.
But for "silent resignation", the mainstream media in the United States immediately associated with "lying flat", a word that has been popular in China since the spring of 2021, which began with Baidu Tieba, which means to reject fierce competition, give up hard work, and pursue a low-desire life.
Chinese social media users have a much larger vocabulary than Americans. Young people not only talk about "lying flat" but also talk about "involution", pointing out that no matter how hard they work, there is no return; they hope to "run" and immerse themselves in the study of "runxue" in an attempt to solve the three major problems of "why to run, where to run, and how to run" -- "rolling, lying, and running" are known as the three major choices of Chinese young people at present.
Some people go home to become "stay-at-home children" and withdraw from the job market to live under the fence of their parents, receiving support from their parents because they are unable to be independent, while others advocate a "Buddhist" attitude of life – indifferent to everything, calmly, effortlessly, and without fighting. The lying flat person launched his own song: "It's good to lie flat, it's wonderful to lie flat, lying flat is the king's way, lying flat can never fall down again, lying flat is not falling." ”
College students saw their own shadow in Lu Xun's "Kong Yiji", and gave rise to "Kong Yiji literature": "I don't understand Kong Yiji when I am young, but I am already a person in a book when I read it"; It is said that academic qualifications are stepping stones, but I slowly found that it is also a high platform that I can't get off, and it is a long gown that Kong Yiji can't take off"; If I hadn't read a book, I would have willingly gone to the factory to screw it, but there was no if......
However, among the buzzwords of "anti-work neologism", the most shocking one is this one: "swing rotten". If "lying flat" reflects both the nascent counterculture movement and the fight back against the competitive work environment, then to the point of "rotting", it already shows how tired young people are, and seems to have entered a state of psychological deterioration of "giving up any possibility of hope". As The Guardian observes, there is a more worrying implication to the way young people in China use it: to embrace the deteriorating situation rather than try to turn it around. It is similar to other Chinese idioms, such as "broken jars" and "dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water".
At this point, the "anti-work neologism" has spilled over from work and the workplace into the wider world of life. Just as the term "Buddhist life" is not just about losing interest in work, but also about finding it troublesome to be in love, the term "silent resignation" is now being used in the United States for non-work aspects of people's lives, such as marriage and relationships.
In China, for the previous generation, success in life meant working hard, getting married, and having children. For this generation, "lying flat" not only means not looking for a job, but may also be accompanied by the willingness to give up marriage and not have children. In early January 2022, the official news agency Xinhua News Agency released a video reminding young Chinese men born in 2000 that they were eligible to marry. "The post-00s have reached the legal age of marriage," it declares, because according to Chinese law, men can marry at the age of 22 and women from the age of 20. On Weibo's hot search charts, people reject what they see as government pressure.
"Stop nagging me!" said one user, using the most common words of disgust that people who have been forced to marry about their parents. It's like the Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Choir's popular song "What I Do Is For Your Own Good" tells Chinese parents who persevere "for your own good": "Dear family, I have my own life." ”
Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Choir "Spring Festival Self-Help Guide"
The number of marriages in China has fallen for nine consecutive years, halving in less than 10 years. About 6.8 million couples registered their marriages in 2022, the lowest level since records began in 1986, and well below the 13.5 million couples recorded in 2013, according to data released by the government in June 2023.
In 2022, the Chinese population declined for the first time since 1961, and it was expected that this milestone process would not occur until 2029 or later. And from now on, China's population decline is likely to accelerate: the United Nations predicts that by the end of the century, China's population will plummet from 1.4 billion today to less than 800 million. Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby commented, "You have to go back to the plague and famine of the late Middle Ages to find that the population loss was so great." ”
That's why one video that has been widely circulated during the pandemic sounds so shocking: in the video, a young man rebels against the police, who ask him to go to a quarantine point, "not to go will affect three generations". The young man shouted: "This will be our last generation." ”
Letting go of expectations: a coping mechanism
It stands to reason that young people want their own lives, not those imposed by the outside world. On the plus side, the words "silent resignation" and "lying flat" both express the desire to live a healthier and more balanced life, both in the United States and in China. However, if we look at the social environment in which young people in China and the United States grew up, we will find that these two terms are the product of the interweaving of different cultural traditions and government policies.
Americans have always admired individual rights, freedoms, and independence. But in 2022, young people find themselves facing insurmountable obstacles: debt, high inflation and lack of social mobility.
In 2022, the total U.S. student loan debt reached $1.75 trillion, with an average of $28,950 per borrower. Fifty-five percent of students at public four-year institutions have student loans, and 57 percent of students at private, non-profit four-year institutions have educational debt. This means that more than half of all students leave college with heavy debt, often taking nearly 20 years to pay off these loans.
Scene of a February 2023 "Cancel Student Debt" rally, Getty Images
This is because, over the past 30 years, the cost of universities in the United States has been increasing. Tuition at public four-year colleges increased from $4,160 to $10,740, and tuition at private nonprofit institutions increased from $19,360 to $38,070 (adjusted for inflation). As fees increase, so does the need for student loans and other forms of financial aid.
In addition, runaway inflation is making everything more expensive, while real incomes are shrinking. Social mobility is declining as many Americans are being squeezed out of the housing market due to exorbitant housing prices. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 68% of Americans believe that younger generations will have a worse life than their parents. All things considered, when hard work isn't enough to achieve success, quietly giving up seems like a logical coping strategy.
Unlike young people in the United States, young people in China do not go into debt in adult life, because parents have traditionally been under tremendous pressure to provide their children with the best education possible.
Due to the impact of the family planning policy, parents want their children to get ahead. Not only do they pay for tuition, but they also pay a lot of money for extracurricular activities, leaving little time for children to play. The extracurricular education industry is booming, and until 2021, it was big business. As a result, the fact that China has one of the highest costs in the world to raise a family has created a large number of young couples who are too stressed to have children.
The educational attainment of young people in China is the highest in decades, and the number of graduates from universities and vocational schools is at an all-time high. However, as the economy slows sharply, graduates face a growing mismatch between expectations and opportunities. They begin to realize that a degree may not improve their social status and will not lead to other guaranteed benefits. They are increasingly convinced that the excessive education they receive today will not be valued tomorrow. This sense of disillusionment was most fully expressed in the popularity of "Confucian literature". As an impoverished talent, his story is now synonymous with the discontent of millions of students who graduate and lose their jobs.
The youth unemployment rate continues to climb year on year, with the 16- to 24-year-old age group hitting an all-time high of 21.3% in June 2023. A few weeks later, the government said it would stop publishing the data. A few years ago, few would have predicted that China would not be able to create enough new jobs for young people. For decades, China has been the world's factory and economic powerhouse, creating a plethora of new jobs in everything from manufacturing and services to high-paying white-collar workers. One in five young Chinese is now unable to find a job, a major reversal of a decades-long trend of creating large numbers of jobs that has led to increased social mobility and personal prosperity.
The big trouble is that the young people who find jobs don't have an easy life either. The problem is not only the long working hours – especially in the infamous "996" work system (six days a week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), which is popular among tech giants, but also the fact that jobs are often insecure. Some flexibility at work can be good, but too much uncertainty can spark anxiety. The jobs created by the service sector and the booming platform economy, as well as white-collar jobs that previously felt secure, are now facing this situation. More and more young people are choosing to compete for civil service positions. They were once hated by young people, but are now generally perceived as safer and more attractive (especially by young parents).
A "Programmer's Guide to Public Examination" has hit the hot list on the open source website GitHub
At the same time, high housing prices have dashed the hopes of young people to buy a home and start a family. For example, it has become almost impossible for the average young Chinese to buy a home in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing. According to data from China's real estate market monitoring and research institute, China's house-price-to-income ratio is well above the international average of 3 to 6 times. In 2021, the average house price in China was 12 times higher than the average income.
The lack of social mobility, coupled with the rising cost of living, is driving disillusioned young people to abandon expectations. All the "anti-work" buzzwords are nothing more than a coping mechanism for young people who have no savings and no future in sight.
Life is stagnant, flow is stopped?
It is not the first time in history that a group of young people have shown frustration with the bleakness of their lives and their frustrating loss of grasp of their own world. It is no accident that in the twenties of the twentieth century, historians spoke of the "lost generation".
In the 20s of the 21st century, we may not have found the right words to describe this generation of young people, but to say that they are a "generation without expectations" may not be far from the truth. But how can we make such a pessimistic picture in an age when the latest technologies are emerging and artificial intelligence seems to be about to bring about a huge leap in productivity?
A few years ago, Entrepreneur magazine listed ten technologies that could change the world. In addition to Crispr, regenerative medicine and rocket repurposing, the other seven are all related to Moore's Law of computing and data science, from quantum computing, artificial intelligence and automation to robotic assistants and voice assistants, from virtual and mixed reality to autonomous driving and cryptocurrency. The magazine put it bluntly that we are on the verge of another tech boom. These technologies will soon become mainstream, changing the world.
In fact, it only takes a little backwards to realize that we are in a state of stagnation in other technologies except computer and data science.
The closest indicator to technological progress in economics is called "total factor productivity" (TFP). The concept is a bit strange: it calculates the remaining productivity growth after labor growth and capital investment. When TFP rises, it means that the same amount of labor, using the same amount of land and machinery, produces more work than before. It's our best attempt to measure the indefinable innovations and improvements, which are constantly improving the standard of human living, to borrow Steve Jobs' famous phrase of "working smarter." In short, if the TFP is flat, then the standard of living will also stagnate.
According to calculations by Robert Gordon, a prominent macroeconomist and economic historian at Northwestern University, and contrary to the rhetoric of technocrats who often paint the future rose, TFP has been largely flat in recent decades. Since 1970, TFP has grown at a rate of only one-third of that of 1920-1970. If you can understand it as an economics layman, it means that people are poorer, work longer hours, and leave their children and grandchildren with a worse world than they inherited from their grandparents.
经济学家Robert Gordon
What does this mean for the future? At a time when life is always going well, I am afraid that it is difficult for us to accept the prospect that the standard of living of mankind is likely to stagnate in the future. The slowness of technological progress will be reinforced by a series of "reverse" factors: the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the level of education is no longer rising, the population is aging, and so on.
Economist Paul Krugman points out that the self-image, and even self-identity, of our society is centered on continuous development and progress. If progress ceases to be taken for granted, and if the incomes of the next generation of wage earners continue to stagnate or fall, we will have to think hard about the social and political consequences of this.
Previously, absolute upward intergenerational mobility was an almost universal experience among young people. But as class disparities widen in family composition, parenting styles, test scores, community quality, and college enrollment and graduation rates, upward mobility among today's youth is increasingly at risk. The decline in expectations for education is particularly alarming. A fundamental meaning of progress used to be the upward movement of society through education as a substitute for choices made with inheritance or wealth. Today, however, all of this is no longer self-evident and therefore not taken for granted.
Failing to give young people a future would be a failure for society as a whole
So should young people really be pessimistic about the future? While pessimism may seem deeper than optimism, cynicism about our collective ability to build a better world will only make it harder for us to win support for the economic policies needed to create the future. This can be even more detrimental to young people who are struggling.
Instead of blaming themselves, young people should start blaming the institutional system, or the underlying causes of the economic fragility and instability of this generation. From taxes, to real estate policies, to whether an individual's job is secure, there are forces that are detrimental to the entire group.
In early 2021, during the pandemic, the United States experienced the so-called "Great Resignation," in which American workers voluntarily left their jobs en masse due to burnout and the freedom to work from home. The most common reasons for quitting include: rising cost of living while wages are stagnant, limited opportunities for career advancement, poor work environment, lack of benefits, inflexible remote work policies, and chronic dissatisfaction with work. Of course, there are also many people who have reassessed their lives and put more emphasis on family, friends, and mental health as a result of the pandemic.
2021 U.S. resignation wave data, Statista
However, resignation has proven not to be an effective cope. Instead of leaving the labor market for long periods of time (which can cause economic hardship, especially during periods of high inflation), many workers simply change jobs. While employees may feel empowered by being able to voluntarily quit when they see fit, their career ladder later in life may suffer due to a lack of experience and professional connections. Some regret resigning from their original positions. Soon, labor force participation rates in some regions were back to or even exceeding pre-pandemic levels. This suggests that it is questionable whether the "Great Resignation" constitutes a persistent trend at work.
One unintended effect is that businesses have increased their automation rates, creating a boom in robotics and artificial intelligence. Overall, an aging population and labor shortages will accelerate industrial automation, not only to replace "out-of-the-box" workers, but also to reduce costs.
Although China did not experience the "Great Resignation" during the pandemic as in Western countries, China's young people are no longer satisfied with just looking for jobs. They are looking for jobs that provide a level of security, work-life balance, and a path to upward mobility, and many are starting to think seriously about the meaning of work. However, rising youth unemployment could limit options and force Chinese youth into less-than-desirable jobs. If these issues are not addressed in the coming years, China will have a generation of lost youth who may find ways to express their grievances differently than they do by creating online buzzwords.
Recognising the multiple dimensions of young people's job dissatisfaction will not only help to design and examine solutions from a policy perspective, but also to engage in deep reflection around how to make young people in China feel more hopeful. Addressing these issues can start by giving workers a voice in the workplace, improving job security during times of severe economic anxiety, and addressing economic inequality.
Individuals cannot thrive without a good education, a stable and fulfilling career, and affordable, good housing. And if the individual does not prosper, the whole society will be worse. If young people don't get the education they need to prepare for the future, if they feel like they lack a stable and rewarding job, or if they can't afford cost-effective housing, they lose hope. Hope is one of the key drivers of a strong society. Without hope, people become frustrated, feel unable to reach their potential, and a country's economic and social capital declines. This will have a negative impact on social cohesion and consequently bad politics. Hope is essential.
It is only fair for future generations to believe that they will be able to achieve the same dreams as their parents and reach their potential in all aspects of life. Societies rightly change over time, and each generation faces its own challenges and opportunities to create a future that is different from what came before. However, the ladder of success needs to be kept in place. Regardless of an individual's background, there is still a need for a stable core foundation that enables them to thrive.
One need only look at the policy decisions on education, employment and housing over the past few decades to see how short-sighted they are and how little they have done to improve the real life opportunities of young people, especially those who did not start out in privileged positions. The agents of change should not only be the younger generation, but the power of the whole society. As E.H. Carr (E.H. Carr) In his brilliant 1961 essay "What is History?", Carr said: "As soon as we were born, the world began to transform us from mere biological units into social units. "Society does matter.
As an African proverb goes, it takes the strength of the whole village to raise a child. Failing to give young people a future would be a failure for society as a whole.