Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat” (躺平).
Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.”
Last week, the movement clashed with the party’s message of success and consumerism as it celebrated the centennial of its founding.
Guo, 44, became a freelance writer in Dali, a town in Yunnan Province known for its traditional architecture and picturesque scenery. He married a woman he met there.
“Work was OK, but I didn’t like it much,” Guo said. “What is wrong with doing your own thing, not just looking at the money?”
“Lying flat” is a “resistance movement” to a “cycle of horror” from high-pressure Chinese schools to jobs with seemingly endless work hours, novelist Liao Zenghu wrote in Caixin, the country’s most prominent business magazine.
“In today’s society, our every move is monitored and every action criticized,” Liao wrote. “Is there any more rebellious act than to simply ‘lie flat’?”
It is not clear how many people have gone so far as to quit their jobs or move out of major cities. Judging by packed rush-hour subways in Beijing and Shanghai, most young Chinese slog away at the best jobs they can get.
Still, the CCP is trying to discourage the trend.
Beijing needs skilled professionals to develop technology and other industries. China’s population is getting older and the pool of working-age people has shrunk by about 5 percent from its peak in 2011.
“Struggle itself is a kind of happiness,” the newspaper Southern Daily, published by the CCP, said in a commentary. “Choosing to ‘lie flat’ in the face of pressure is not only unjust, but also shameful.”
The trend echoes similar movements in Japan and other countries where young people have embraced anti-materialist lifestyles in response to bleak job prospects and bruising competition for shrinking economic reward.
Economic output per person in China doubled over the past decade, according to government data, but many complain that the gains went mostly to a handful of tycoons and state-owned companies.
Professionals have said that their incomes are failing to keep up with soaring housing, childcare and other costs.
In a sign of the issue’s political sensitivity, four professors who were quoted by the Chinese press talking about “lying flat” declined to discuss it with a foreign reporter.
Another possible sign of official displeasure: T-shirts, mobile phone cases and other “lie flat”-themed products are disappearing from online sales platforms.
Urban employees complain that work hours have swelled to “996,” or 9am to 9pm, six days per week.
“We generally believe slavery has died away. In fact, it has only adapted to the new economic era,” a woman who writes under the name Xia Bingbao (夏冰雹), or Summer Hailstones, said on the Douban social media service.
Some elite graduates in their 20s, who should have the best job prospects, have said that they are worn out from the “exam hell” of high school and university, adding that they see no point in making more sacrifices.
“Chasing fame and fortune does not attract me. I am so tired,” said Zhai Xiangyu, a 25-year-old graduate student.
Some professionals are cutting short their careers, which removes their experience from the job pool.
Xu Zhunjiong, a human resources manager in Shanghai, said that she is quitting at 45, a decade before the legal minimum retirement age for women, to move with her Croatian-born husband to his homeland.
“I want to retire early. I don’t want to fight any more,” Xu said. “I’m going to other places.”
Thousands vented frustration online after the CCP’s announcement in May that official birth limits would be eased to allow all couples to have three children, instead of two.
The CCP has enforced birth restrictions since 1980 to restrain population growth, but worries that China, with economic output per person still below the global average, needs more young workers.
Minutes after the announcement, Web sites were flooded with complaints that the move did nothing to help parents cope with childcare costs, long work hours, cramped housing, job discrimination against mothers and a need to look after elderly parents.
Xia wrote that she moved to a valley in Zhejiang Province, south of Shanghai, for a “low-desire life,” after working in Hong Kong.
Despite a high-status job as an English-language reporter, she said that her rent devoured 60 percent of her income and she had no money at the end of each month.
Rejecting the argument that young people who “lie flat” are giving up economic success when that is out of reach for many, Xia wrote that there is a growing gulf between a wealthy elite and the majority in China.
“When resources are focused more and more on the few people at the head and their relatives, the workforce is cheap and replaceable,” she added. “Is it sensible to entrust your destiny to small handouts from others?”
Xia declined an interview request.
Guo said that he puts in more hours as a freelancer than he did at a newspaper, but he is happier and life is more comfortable: He and his wife eat breakfast on their breezy sixth-floor apartment balcony with a view of trees.
“As long as I can keep writing, I’m very satisfied,” Guo said. “I don’t feel stifled.”
Some who can afford it have withdrawn almost entirely from work.
A 27-year-old architect in Beijing said that she started saving as a teenager to achieve financial freedom.
“From September last year, when I saw that all my savings had reached 2 million yuan [US$309,540], I lay down,” said the woman, who would give only the name Nana, in an interview over her social media account.
Nana said that she turned down a job that paid 20,000 yuan per month due to the long hours and what she saw as limited opportunities for creativity.
“I want to be free from inflexible rules,” Nana said. “I want to travel and make myself happy.”
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