The US has act your wage and quiet quitting. China has additional colorful terms. Many zoomers in China play lottery as their only chance to get ahead.
‘Letting It Rot’
In China, young people are abandoning the the idea that they can get ahead by hard work. A record number play the lottery as their only dream to success.
They use the expression ‘Letting It Rot’ instead of quiet quitting.
China’s ruling Communist Party wants the country’s young people to be ambitious, work hard and prepare for adversity. Li Jiajia just wants to win the lottery.
The ever-present role of the state in daily life is stultifying, she said. Though she wanted to be a journalist in high school, she gave up when she realized how heavily the government censors the media.
“I want to leave here and live the life I want,” Li said. “It won’t happen overnight, but for now, the thrill of scratching lottery tickets gives me a little break.”
More than two years of harsh government Covid controls left some pondering the role of the Communist Party and other sources of authority in their lives, or even the meaning of life and who they aspire to be—questions many had never contemplated before.
Many are quitting their jobs and turning to meditation and other forms of spirituality. Some are moving far from China’s megacities to start lives anew in places like Dali, a southwestern city famous within China as a hub for digital nomads and dropouts.
Others are flooding fortune-teller stands and Buddhist temples in mountainous areas, or exploring Chinese and Western philosophers and writers from Laozi to Hermann Hesse. Some are throwing “quitting parties” with banners celebrating their newfound freedom.
Playing the lottery has become especially trendy for 20- and 30-somethings, whose purchases of lottery tickets helped push sales to $67 billion from January to October, a 53% jump from the previous year and averaging $48 per person in China.
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.
China’s Catch Phrase Evolution
- “Involution” refers to situations in which people work hard and compete without anyone getting ahead.
- “Touching fish,” a phrase, borrowed from a Chinese idiom, refers to executing small rebellions at work, such as taking long toilet breaks, doing online shopping or reading novels in the office.
- “Lying flat,” a form of mundane resistance that involves dragging one’s feet at work or dropping out of the workforce altogether.
- Last year, the phrase “let it rot” spread to describe young people who have completely given up.
Not Allowed to Talk About It
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 2021 article published in the top party journal Qiushi, he specifically warned against “lying flat.” Discussions of the phenomenon have often triggered censorship online.
Quiet Quitting
For the US version of “Lying Flat” please see Quiet Quitting, Are You Doing Only What’s Necessary at Work and No More?
Also see Act Your Wage is the New Meme as Career Ambitions Plunge
Cracking Down on Dissent
China does what it does best, crack down on dissent. But cracking down on lying flat or retting it rot is much harder.
The savings of many have been wiped out in property scams and youth unemployment is about 21 percent according to official numbers, and likely much higher in practice.
China’s Securities Regulator Warns Companies to Increase Dividends and Buy Backs
Yesterday, I wrote China’s Securities Regulator Warns Companies to Increase Dividends and Buy Backs
Hoping to boost stock market prices, China mandates more dividends and buybacks.
I see it as a foolish mandate and an act of desperation. If the debt is not serviceable by profits, it will weaken the corporations. How can that rebalance anything?
Everything You Think Do and Say
China tries to control everything you think, do, and say. Someone writing this post in China would find themselves in prison for years.
Instead of working 996, Chinese zoomers lie flat, let it rot, and turn to dreams of winning the lottery.
Demise of the Dollar
For two decades I had people telling me China would rule the world, the yuan would replace the dollar, and China would soon eclipse the US in GDP.
None of it happened nor will it happen as long as China squashes dissent, squashes capitalism, and relies on state planning for everything.
Most of the recent nonsense has been about a BRICS currency, the petroyuan theory, or a gold backed-yuan.
Gold-Backed Petro-Yuan Silliness
In 2017, I wrote about Gold-Backed Petro-Yuan Silliness
Yuan pricing and clearing of crude oil futures is the “beginning” of a broader strategic push “to support yuan pricing and clearing in commodities futures trading,” Pan Gongsheng, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said last month.
To support the new benchmark, China has opened more than 6,000 trading accounts for the crude futures contract, Reuters reported in July.
“Yawn”
That was my comment in the above post. Six years later, people are still predicting the same silly things.
The idea of using yuan futures to trade oil when the yuan does not even float is downright idiotic but that does not stop the stupidity.
Also the irony is staggering. The US is nearly energy independent, no longer needing to import oil form the Mideast.
The Petroyuan theory, if it meant anything at all (it doesn’t), would be a US success story, not a demise of the dollar tale.
The Dating Game: Michael Pettis Challenges The Economist to a Bet on China
Going back even further, on March 30, 2012 I wrote The Dating Game: Michael Pettis Challenges The Economist to a Bet on China
Michael Pettis made a bet with the Economist on when China would pass the US in GDP. The Economist said by 2018. Pettis and I said even 2030 was optimistic.
The Economist paid off.
Recent No Details Hype Headlines
- India Times, June 23, 2022: BRICS Working on New Global Reserve Currency
- Fox, Oct 29, 2022: Russia, China May be Preparing New Gold-Backed Currency
- Business Insider January 17, 2023: Russia and Iran are Working on a Gold-Backed Currency
- DC News, April 8, 2023: New World Currency? How BRICS Nations could impact U.S. Dollar
- Foreign Policy, April 24, 2023: A BRICS Currency Could Shake the Dollar’s Dominance
The above reports all have several things in common. They are all proposals, they are mostly to totally sensational hype, and not a one of them have any meaningful details.
There are literally hundreds of similar reports all speculating on the quick demise of the dollar. And they have been saying so since I started blogging in 2003.
More Gold Backed BRIC Currency Silliness on Dethroning the Dollar
On July 7, 2023, I noted More Gold Backed BRIC Currency Silliness on Dethroning the Dollar
Echo Chamber
My first thought was the announcement was just more bullsheet. My second thought was the same.
My third, fourth, fifth and perpetual comment is still the same. The BRICS are not going to have a freely floating currency backed by gold.
Hell, they are highly unlikely to even have a freely floating currency. China does not even have a freely floating currency.
What Would it Take for a BRIC-Based Currency to Succeed?
Missing in all of the ridiculous headline hype is a simple question What Would it Take for a BRIC-Based Currency to Succeed?
I come up with six conditions none of which is met. The yuan, in and of itself fails. China has no international bond market. The BRICS have no bond market at all.
The BRICS idea has no chance of competing with the dollar or even the Euro on a meaningful percentage of trade basis.
However, a BRICS currency could play a role in sanction avoidance. See the above link for discussion.
The US vs. China
Wake me up when China floats the yuan, allows freedom of speech, respects property rights, gives up export mercantilism that hurts itself, adopts capitalism and stops its government-dictated command economy.
Many companies exist in the US because this is the only place they can exist.
In the name of fairness and competition, the EU would have broken up Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple before they even got big. China would have killed them via state controls and mandates.
Despite lots of good news over the years about the great results of the Chinese version of capitalism, it is a one party, centrally planned state. By definition, it isn’t open to new ideas and therefore doomed to fail.
Unfortunately, we in the west, haven’t learned anything – yet. While they try to catch up with us economically, we try to catch up with them politically.
As China continues down (and I mean down) on the path determined by its glorious leaders, maybe the west will wake up. I live in hope but as PapaDave would put it, hope is not a strategy.
5 years ago I thought China was going to embrace MORE capitalism. I was invested in some Chinese tech as well as US tech. The bright young Chinese were feeling the thrill of growing many Chinese tech powerhouses and getting wealthy as a result. The future looked very bright.
Then a couple of Chinese tech titans started talking about how they were changing China for the better and even outlining their view of a more prosperous and free market future for the country.
Apparently, that didn’t sit well with the dictators that run the country. They viewed it as a threat to their leadership and they started to clamp down on the biggest growth engine for the economy.
The rest is history.
Thanks goodness we live in a country that provides the most fertile ground in the world for innovation and entrepreneurship. Is it perfect? Of course not. But the US is still the best place in the world for risk takers to succeed.
Decay and low level infection replace centuries of wars in China and Europe.
This article is amazing. I have to admit I did not know most of it. I knew about zombie cities and personal wealth based on unoccupied real estate and the onerous Communist Party, but I will need to adjust my opinions about Chinese workers. I feel really sorry for them. For a minute I thought this was going to be a comparison to the Generation Z crybabies in the US. But our Gen Z loafers are living in a free society with enormous opportunities.
DARPA, and Government sponsored ARPNET, Google, LifeLog/Facebook, etc you know that right? It was not a spontaneous creation in the Garage. Most large tech companies are funded or policy-FED funded by elites, or also known as Royal Nobility (aka Black Nobility/British Commonwealth). There’s a reason why there’s numbers like 1099 on the tax form, Error 66 in the Operating system and whatnot.
As has been said for a long time now – China will get old long before they get rich. We may have our problems, but they are nothing like what they are facing
Considering what the Chinese population curve looks like (way worse that America due to 1 child policy), I would have expected the job prospects for young people to look pretty good in the next 10-20 years time (maybe not today of course) because so many will be aged out of the work force so job opportunities should be abundant.
Quiet quitting and other terms have always been around even since the 80s when I entered the workforce after college. Some percentage of the population never wants to work hard to get ahead or else feels things are rigged against them. The good news for the ones who do want to work hard is that it makes it easier for them to get ahead because there is less competition for better jobs.
And we have:
“The “coffee badging” trend is a creative way that workers have found to get around return to office mandates to save time and money.”
Being sucked dry by the 0.1%, (whether it be the political or financial class) seems to have lost much of its appeal.
Speaking of quiet quitting, I came across this recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welch,_West_Virginia.
It shows a picture of the town in 1946 versus what it looked like in 2019.
A lot of people are blind to the decline of the U.S. and think people just need to pull themselves up by their boot flaps, but try doing that in Welch today.
Free market capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty and has given posperity to more people than any other political/economic system in history. The troulbe is we don’t have it here either, corrupt crony capitalism vs communist state control central planning. Both systems lead to demise the Chinese will get there first.
Thank you
“China tries to control everything you think, do, and say.”
In the U.S., the government and mainstream media try to control the narrative. At COP28, Al Gore said that only mainstream media should be allowed. However, they parrot the official false narrative, designed to fool the public. Fact checking organizations lie about people who are telling the truth, to protect official lies. It feels what living in the Soviet Union must have been like.
I was reading today that the EU is going after Musk with their new digital media law, because the EU doesn’t want people knowing the truth. That was the problem people had in Eastern Europe, under communism. Seems as if the Iron Curtain is moving west.
Poor Jim Rogers. China was supposed to be the most capitalist communist country on the planet. Even he did not believe the debilitating effects of dictatorship and how impossible it is to get the freedom you deserve would win in the end. My office was like that. If the management is going to go all out to suppress, and wreck everyones life so the crappy (commie/autocracy) narrative continues, there is only one way to stop it … total and complete war on the institution from inside, and most people are too lazy, old or scared to think that way. You hear about the heroes and the Paul Reveres. You never hear about the many thousands thrown in prisons for trying to change things.
Does Xi have any comment?
I can personally confirm that the ‘let it rot’ mentality isn’t exclusive to China.
Canada is a basketcase and America, well….2024 will paint a pretty gnarly picture.
In Europe, the desperation among young people isn’t fetching headlines but is very very real.
Western Europe seems to have lost its soul. It’s no coincidence that unaffordable housing, mass-immigration and a severe decline in economic prosperity is affecting people. Nationstates have sold out their destiny and sovereignty to the European Union’s political superproject. At this stage who can possibly deny this?
It’s literally the same case in the majority of Western European countries.
Although some were smart enough to hold on to their own currencies, like DK, SK, GBP.
Never before have I felt these levels of true desperation, fuming anger and utter hopelessness. Not just in myself but virtually every single person I talk to in my daily life.
Young people, even though they might not have intimate knowledge of the geopolitical powerplays, the central bank games of financial repression and fraud or the betrayal of the public by their politicians in favour of a political prestigeproject….they all instinctively know nothing makes sense anymore and everything the media and politicians tell us is a lie. Perhaps it’s the Irish curse. But the majority of this generation is fleeing the country.
De-industrialization, energy-transition, the loss of manufacturing, the loss of national identity, ever increasing division and anger,allowing Nato and America to dictate energypolicies and engage in a war that can’t be won….this is the current state of the EU. Compared to the 1980s&1990s this decline in livingstandards since the rise of the EU cannot be covered up. I’m not talking about consumerism, smartphones or other fancy tech…I’m talking about social cohesion, the ability to afford a house and issues like social security, pensions, overall happiness. It’s all gone downhill.
I personally won’t let it rot however.
I have to make some massive lifechanges in the near future, because staying here under these conditions is similar to a slow death.
In my 50 years on this planet I’ve never experienced this kind of societal chaos, financial repression, social ‘justice’ hysteria and disturbing political freakshows.
Don’t let it rot. Change your life, no matter how hard that may be.
Worse in Russia . Unbelievable causalities in an unwinnable Ukraine invasion.
I have zero problems with let it rot in china. In a lot of ways its rotting in the US also. Scary part is what the govts are going to do to save themselves. Let it rot to get blown up.
I wouldn’t take this WSJ article as gospel. Just like the other media they can overreact. However it seems as if every country has problems these days. I think that we will discover that it is because we will find that they are way too corrupt at the top. Corruption needs broad prosperity in order to succeed without killing off the host.
This is hilarious
https://x.com/KevinTartis/status/1736823656955719871?s=20
Nothing like a defenestration comic to lighten the mood…. 🙂
Official interest rates raised to 16% last week in Russia. A BRIC currency is a joke.