TANGPING – RESISTING IN CHINA

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 TANGPING – RESISTING IN CHINA

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• The story: Young people in China have set off a nascent counterculture movement that involves lying down and doing as little as possible. Many young Chinese are openly accepting they enjoy doing nothing! Some are quitting factory jobs, and biking around doing odd jobs, using up their savings. They call this new lifestyle “lying flat.”
• Lying flat: A blogger titled a post “Lying Flat Is Justice,” attaching a photo of himself lying on his bed in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Before long, the post was being celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anti-consumerist manifesto. “Lying flat” went viral and has since become a broader statement about Chinese society.
• Revolt through refusal: A generation ago, the route to success in China was to work hard, get married and have children. The country’s authoritarianism was seen as a fair trade-off as millions were lifted out of poverty. But with employees working longer hours and housing prices rising faster than incomes, many young Chinese fear they will be the first generation not to do better than their parents. So, they are now defying the country’s long-held prosperity narrative by refusing to participate in it.
• Xi Jinping's censors: The blog post was removed by censors, who saw it as an affront to Beijing’s economic ambitions. Mentions of “lying flat” — tangping in Mandarin — are restricted on the Chinese internet. The government has launched an official counternarrative - encouraging young people to work hard for the sake of the country’s future. 
• Meaning of Tangping: To "lie flat" means to forgo marriage, not have children, stay unemployed and eschew material wants such as a house or a car. It is the opposite of what China’s leaders have asked of their people. Another young fellow thinks of the act as “silent resistance.” Some are dropping out of university in as they finally realise they disliked what their parents chose for them. Many more hate the office jobs that give no time for relaxation.
• We hate 996: Many youngsters now think they should work hard for what they love, but not “996” — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — as many employers in China expect. Such people, to make ends meet, minimize spending. They have no long-term plans at all. While plenty of Chinese millennials continue to adhere to the country’s traditional work ethic, “lying flat” reflects both a nascent counterculture movement and a backlash against China’s hypercompetitive work environment.
• Turning point: This "tangping" culture may be a turning point for China, since young people feel a kind of pressure that they cannot explain and they feel that promises were broken; many realize that material betterment is no longer the single most important source of meaning in life.
• Communists are scared: The ruling Communist Party, wary of any form of social instability, has targeted the “lying flat” idea as a threat to stability in China. Censors are deleting tangping groups, from popular internet forums. In May 2021, China’s internet regulator ordered online platforms to “strictly restrict” new posts on tangping. E-commerce platforms have been ordered to stop selling clothes, phone cases and other merchandise branded with “tangping.” The state news media has called tangping “shameful,” and warned against “lying flat before getting rich.” 
• Summary: Many youngster now say those people who say lying down is shameful are shameless. Many now want to live minimally and “think and express freely.” Many say that since only running forward is allowed, but not lying down, so they resist.

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