America Had ‘Quiet Quitting.’ In China, Young People Are ‘Letting It Rot.’
"Beijing’s Crackdown on Islam Is Coming for Kids "The Red Sea Crisis Proves China Was Ahead of the Curve "Biden is ‘tougher’ on China than Trump, says former Morgan Stanley chair in Asia "Xi awarded 3rd term as China’s president, extending rule"" [...] The techniques being used now on the Hui were first honed by Beijing on Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities inhabiting the northwestern region of Xinjiang.Unprecedented securitization of the region .. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/22/chinas-mass-internment-camps-have-no-clear-end-in-sight/ .. over the past decade has led to the development of a high-tech surveillance state that monitors virtually every aspect of Muslim behavior. Leaked police files .. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/29/china-uyghur-muslim-surveillance-police/ .. show people being incarcerated en masse for fasting during Ramadan, wearing a headscarf, or reciting the Quran. Beijing claims that the measures—dubbed “the People’s War on Terror”—are effective in combating terrorism and integrating Xinjiang with the rest of China. P - The notice in Yuxi suggests that China’s treatment of its “model Muslim minority” is increasingly taking a Xinjiang turn .. https://www.economist.com/china/2019/09/26/chinas-repression-of-islam-is-spreading-beyond-xinjiang . Reports show that so-called “convenient police stations,” installed .. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/chinas-surveillance-laboratory/ .. throughout Xinjiang every few hundred feet from each other to monitor behavior, are spreading to neighboring provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. Meanwhile, party cadres from the province of Ningxia—another Hui stronghold—are traveling .. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/ningxia-crackdown-12032018125357.html#:~:text=The%20Ningxia%20government%20signed%20an,27. .. to the region to receive “anti-terrorism training.” P - Not long ago, in Xinjiang during Ramadan of 2015, the infamous “watermelon incident” occurred, in which professors at the University of Medicine handed out .. https://observers.france24.com/en/20150701-china-muslims-uighur-ramadan-freedom-religion .. watermelon slices to students in the middle of the day, when practicing Muslims fast. Those who refused the watermelon were reportedly threatened with the denial of their diplomas. The revelation led to violent protests .. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/world/asia/ethnic-tensions-in-xinjiang-complicate-china-turkey-ties.html .. in Turkey, putting so much diplomatic pressure on Beijing that the Xinjiang party chief Zhang Chunxian joined .. https://news.12371.cn/2015/07/18/ARTI1437181042867727.shtml .. local Muslim representatives for an iftar to celebrate the last day of Ramadan, the first such occasion in the history of modern Xinjiang. P - The regional response was as unprecedented as the global outcry, but when the Hui hear stories of events that echo the watermelon incident, they remember that it was a forerunner to an intensified surveillance regime among Uyghurs that soon became a full-scale campaign of coercion and assimilation."
Demoralized by a weak economy and unfulfilling jobs, young Chinese are dropping out, exploring spirituality and becoming more rebellious, presenting new challenges for Beijing
By SHEN LU Tue, Dec 19, 2023 8:45am
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Echoes of the 1960s
In some ways the ennui resembles the “quiet quitting” phenomenon of post pandemic America—or, going back further, the rejection of social norms by young people across the Western world in the 1960s.
In those days, two decades of fast economic growth and wider affluence gave young people more choices than previous generations. Many responded by challenging their parents’ way of life.
For many young urbanites in cities such as Beijing, traditional paths to success have become less reliable and less attractive. PHOTO: GILLES SABRIE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In China, where open protests are rarely possible, young people are now rebelling in other ways.
“Lying flat is a latent resistance to the moral blackmailing of society,” said Amy Yan, a 27-year-old Shenzhen resident who once worked as a buyer for her family’s export business. When the business went bankrupt last year after her parents lost their assets in a financial scam, it reinforced her belief that she should give priority to her spirituality.
Even before the bankruptcy, she had decided that accepting the corporate grind and meeting traditional expectations of marriage and children would interfere with her desire to explore her spirituality.
Following the family crisis, she put her savings of $27,000 into supporting a tiny Taoist ashram she had started with a few fellow practitioners.
Coming into Beijing’s crosshairs
Communist Party leaders have long worried young people could stir unrest, as they did in 1989. The party needs young people to get on board with Beijing’s priorities, not just to keep the economy humming and avoid instability, but to help make China stronger in an era of great-power competition with the U.S.
In a speech at last year’s Communist Party congress, widely quoted in Chinese media, leader Xi Jinping laid out his vision for young people, urging them to have “ideals, courage, a willingness to endure hardship and a dedication to strive” to help “build a modernised socialist country.”
In a 2021 article published in the top party journal Qiushi, he specifically warned against “lying flat.” Discussions of the phenomenon have often triggered censorship online.
If all the young people who had dropped out of China’s labor force and relied financially on their parents were counted, China’s real youth unemployment rate could be as high as 46.5%, according to calculations earlier this year by a Peking University professor.
The Communist Party Youth League—with more than 70 million members—has published commentary on its official WeChat account criticising college graduates for having too much pride. Job seekers “should not refuse to enter the workforce due to the difficulty of finding a job or choose to ‘lie flat’ out of fear of ‘involution,’” the article read.
Greater affluence—but an uncertain future
Until recently, China’s economic progress seemed to be unstoppable, with per-capita incomes surging to around $13,000 in 2022 from less than $1,000 in 2000, according to the World Bank.
But economic growth has slowed. Many economists worry China could get stuck in the “middle-income trap,” in which a country’s progress plateaus before it gets rich. Per-capita incomes in the U.S. were around $76,000 last year.
Academic research shows that social mobility for many groups in China has stalled, meaning it has become harder for people without connections to get ahead.
Many employers that young people gravitated to, including Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, have been shedding staff amid weak growth and government clampdowns on the private sector. Tech salaries have declined in the past three years, according to Maimai, and opportunities for initial public offering payouts have faded, leaving many who used to work “996” schedules—9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—wondering what the point was.
It is also true that many more middle-class young people—especially those without children and mortgages—can afford to drop out of the rat race today than in previous eras.
Some plan to leave: Net emigration from China, which fell to 125,000 in 2012 as the country’s economy boomed, rebounded to more than 310,000 in the first 11 months of 2023, according to United Nations data.
Others want to stay—but on their own terms.
Huang Xialu quit her high-stress job as a product manager at one of China’s largest video-streaming companies in April, so she could focus more on spiritual retreats. For a long time before that, the 33-year-old said she had struggled with a lack of purpose.
“I had a very urgent sense that if I didn’t listen to my gut and take a break to explore what I truly wanted to do in this world, it would be too late,” she said.
In the months following Huang’s resignation, she traveled to Dali, where she worked on a tarot-reading stand, took a training course in life coaching and learned to make pottery.
To Huang, lying flat is the opposite of being passive—it is a path for taking control of one’s own life when wading through uncertain terrain, she said.
Now she has become a certified life coach, helping individuals who are as confused as she was to find a way forward. Her income is less stable.
But “I haven’t regretted quitting for a second,” she said.
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