Many Young People in China 'Lie Flat' as Good Life Seems Unattainable

WASHINGTON/TAIPEI - Fed up with a culture of overwork, through-the-roof housing prices and skyrocketing living costs, many Chinese youth are "lying flat" to express their frustration with the lack of upward social mobility.

Lying flat includes opting out of getting married, having children, purchasing a home or car, and joining the corporate money-making machine, according to China's online discussion forum Zhihu. The tang ping movement embraces doing the bare minimum to maintain a minimalist lifestyle. It rejects the so-called "996 life" of working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, a tech industry schedule that has bled into other sectors and often fails to provide sufficient income for exhausted workers to get ahead. And it worries Chinese authorities, as the government has long equated the employment of college graduates with social stability, according to the official China Daily. In the COVID-19-influenced job market, the Class of 2021 is competing for jobs with the still-unemployed members of the Class of 2020, according to the South China Morning Post.  And because the post-pandemic recovery has been driven by an expansion of blue-collar jobs, according to The New York Times, lying flat makes sense to many.