What is lying flat?

The Chinese Communist Party has clamped down on people sharing the new philosophy online but in an increasingly rigid social structure with a large wealth gap, the movement is proving irresistible.

“I felt consumed by work,” Zuo said. “My job every day couldn’t give me the feeling of satisfaction that I learned something new or that I realized my value.”

Lying flat, or tang ping in Chinese, describes a phenomenon among young people who, instead of striving for higher pay and social status in life, choose to simply lie down and give the bare minimum. It gained traction quickly after a now-deleted post on Tieba, a Chinese forum site, coined the word as a life philosophy. On Douban, a social platform and China’s version of IMDb, a group named “lying flat group” had 10,000 members before being taken down in May. Internet memes, T-shirts, and garments also started appearing online.

The internet buzzword means many things. Simply put, many who embrace the attitude choose not to work hard, not to buy apartments or cars, and not to get married or have children—things Chinese society expects a responsible, functional adult to do. But they all seem to reflect one attitude, defined by an op-ed in the South China Morning Post, that represents “a silent protest to unfairness, often the result of structural and institutional factors that can no longer be altered by personal efforts.”

To many, Yanlin Li, a 24-year-old Columbia University graduate, seems overqualified for a job at a Beijing bank. But fed up with the nights she skipped dinner to finish a data report, and the hours she spent studying for investment exams to no avail, Li settled for something stable.

“There are many class-defined things that I just can’t overcome,” she told The Daily Beast. “For the older generations, if you work hard for something, there’s a big chance that you will succeed. But for us, society is different. There are many things you can’t get even if you work hard for it.”

Official media took notice shortly after the concept of lying flat became a hit on China’s social media. Guangming Daily, a house organ of the Communist Party’s propaganda department, published an article criticizing the lifestyle as an avoidance of stress, saying that it “obviously is not beneficial for economic and social development.” Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily, another government mouthpiece, also chastised the attitude as “not only unjustified, but also shameful. Such ‘toxic chicken soup’ has no value whatsoever.” Zhihu, China’s Quora-like platform, also banned the search term “lying-flatism.”

Most recently, the Party’s network management office demanded major e-commerce platforms remove any products touting “lying down” or neijuan before June 21, a source told China Digital Times.

Neijuan, which translates as involution, is the driving force behind the lying flat movement.

The Chinese news site Sixth Tone describes it as “the opposite of evolution,” meaning people are trapped in vicious cycles of over-competition which stop them from moving on, growing or benefiting.

For Zuo, the word manifests itself in being stuck in what the anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” with grindingly long hours, and constantly having to explain to recruiters why she—with her degree from Boston College—deserves a job more than a fellow graduate who went to another Ivy League institution.

Hanning, a 32-year-old in infrastructure financing who asked us not to use her second name, has spent three weeks working from the exotic city of Dali in southern China, and described herself as “half lying flat.” She does not believe the efforts of government media will have much success in ending the movement. “Unless the society undergoes some structural changes, for instance, there is no more involution,” she wrote in a text, “more and more young people choosing to lie flat will be the trend.”

Evidently, the Chinese government feels alarmed by the trend. If widely adopted, they fear that the neologism can be a threat to a country that is struggling with a slowing economy and an aging population. In May, the Chinese government announced that it would now allow couples to have up to three children in an attempt to boost population growth.

But many young people are choosing not to have children, including Zuo. Two months at a Beijing education consulting firm opened her eyes to the reality kids live in—finishing middle-school math curriculum by fifth grade and earning awards after awards—doing everything to gain a competitive advantage to get into a good school.

“These kids faced involution from the moment they were born. Their edges were slowly knocked out to just fit in the society’s rules of competition,” Zuo said. “Why would I want to bring life to Earth, only for them to suffer through all of it?”

Despite criticisms from the official media and some public intellectuals, many Chinese people see the trend as a natural reaction to the unrelenting pressure of modern life. A poem that went viral on WeChat reads, “Lying flat, is to not bow down. Lying flat, is to not kneel. Lying flat, is to stand up horizontally. Lying flat, is a straight spine.”

Chu Qiao, a 23-year-old based in Shenzhen, said she recently adopted the lying-flat mindset. While keeping her job at PWC, she no longer strives for a higher-paying job and can enjoy her free time. Before, life was full of anxiety for Qiao, who dated in fear of ending up alone, hit the gym after a 10-hour-day to keep an ideal body shape, and tried to beef up her résumé with new software certificates and data skills. But now, instead of feeling the pressure to be the best version of herself in other people’s eyes, she is spending more time with family, friends, and her border collie.

Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平; pinyin: tǎng píng; lit. 'lying flat') is a Mandarin term that describes a rejection of societal pressures to overwork, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns.[1][2][3][4] Those who participate in tang ping instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings"[citation needed] via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life. It can be thought as the Chinese equivalent of the hippie counter-culture movement.[5]

Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a resistance movement,[6] and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture.[7] It has also been compared to the Great Resignation, a surge of resignations that began in the United States and much of the Western world at roughly the same time.[8][9][10] The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, an institution affiliated to Education Ministry of China, listed the word as one of the 10 most popular memes for 2021 in the Chinese Internet. Chinese search engine Sogou also listed the word at the top of its list of most trending memes for 2021.[11]

Unlike the hikikomori in Japan who are socially withdrawn, these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not necessarily socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their professional and economic ambitions and simplify their goals, still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.[12]

The phrase “quiet quitting”, meaning doing only what one's job demands and nothing more, which became popular in the United States in 2022, was thought to be inspired by the Tang Ping movement.[13][14] Another newer related phrase is bai lan (Chinese: 摆烂; pinyin: bǎi làn; lit. 'let it rot'), which means "to actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around".[15]

Bailan refers to actions from a losing team when they stop trying to win so they can end the game.[16] This term first appeared around February 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, which is on the Chinese Internet.[17] But, the movement began in April 2021 with a post by Luo Huazhong (username "Kind-Hearted Traveler") on the internet forum Baidu Tieba, in which he discussed his reasons for living a low-key, minimalist lifestyle. In 2016, 26-year-old Luo quit his factory job because it made him feel empty. He then cycled 2,100 km (1,300 mi) from Sichuan to Tibet, and now back in his home town Jiande in eastern Zhejiang Province, spends his time reading philosophy, and gets by doing a few odd jobs and taking US$60 a month from his savings.[18][7] He only eats two meals a day.[18]

Luo's post, entitled with "Lying Flat is Justice", illustrates:

Luo's post and story quickly gained a following on social media, being discussed and soon becoming a buzzword on Sina Weibo and Douban. The idea was praised by many and inspired numerous memes, and has been described as a sort of spiritual movement.[1] Business magazine ABC Money claimed it resonated with a growing silent majority of youth disillusioned by the officially endorsed "Chinese Dream" that encourages a life of hard work and sacrifice with no actual life satisfaction to show for it, spawning the catchphrase "a chive lying flat is difficult to reap" (躺平的韭菜不好割, Tǎng píng de jiǔcài bù hǎo gē).[19]

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) moved quickly to reject the idea. The CAC internet regulator ordered online platforms to "strictly restrict" posts on tang ping and had censors remove Luo's original Tieba post[20] while a discussion group of nearly 10,000 followers on Chinese social media site Douban is no longer accessible.[21] Selling tang ping-branded merchandise online is forbidden.[7]

In May 2021, Chinese state media Xinhua published an editorial asserting that "lying flat" is shameful.[22][23] In May, a video clip of CCTV news commentator Bai Yansong criticizing the low-key mindset circulated on the popular video-sharing website Bilibili,[12] and had attracted thousands of mockeries and slurs on the danmu commentaries in response.[24][25] The same month, a commentary of Hubei Radio and Television Economic Channel said, "you can accept your fate, but you mustn't lie flat."[26] An October article by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, published in the Communist Party journal Qiushi, called for "avoiding 'involution' [nei juan] and 'lying flat'".[9][27]

However, there were official voices offering more empathic opinions on the tang ping phenomenon. Beijing's party-affiliated Guangming Daily newspaper added that tang ping should not be discounted without reflection—if China wants to cultivate diligence in the young generation, it should first try to improve their quality of life.[12] Huang Ping, a literature professor who researches youth culture at East China Normal University, told Sixth Tone that official media outlets may be concerned about the tang ping lifestyle because of its potential to threaten productivity, but "humans aren't merely tools for making things... when you can't catch up with society's development—say, skyrocketing home prices—tang ping is actually the most rational choice."[28]

Description Tang ping is a Mandarin term that describes a rejection of societal pressures to overwork, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns. Wikipedia

West had recently graduated from college and had started work as a transportation analyst in Washington, D.C., a job and life she had always envisioned for herself.

“I was putting in my best effort, attending extra trainings, and considering joining organizations outside of work that would help boost my career,” says West, 24. “I wanted to climb up the corporate ranks forever.”

But West said that long hours and the pressure to perform at work began to make her anxious. She began losing sleep and feeling nauseated; her hair was falling out.

That’s when West “quiet quit” her job, a process that she describes as dropping out of the corporate rat race and doing just enough work to collect her paycheck. “I decided to just go to work for 40 hours a week. That’s it,” she says. After quietly quitting for a few months, West formally left her job last year and has since done freelance work and become a YouTube creator.

In 2016, Luo came to his own realization that a job would not fulfill him. Luo had been working in a factory in China’s central Sichuan province, which made him feel “numb, like a machine,” Luo, now in his thirties, told the New York Times last year. Luo quit his job and spent the next five years biking around China, doing odd jobs, and reading philosophy. He later called his lifestyle “lying flat,” and posted a “lying flat is justice” manifesto online in April 2021.

The post, which authorities have since scrubbed from China’s internet, included a photo of Luo lying down on his bed in a sparsely decorated room with drawn curtains. “Lying down is my philosophical movement. Only through lying down flat can humans become the measure of all things,” he wrote.

Luo’s post went viral last spring, inspiring hundreds if not thousands of others to post lying flat memes and pursue lying flat lifestyles; they put in less effort at work or quit altogether; they bucked societal expectations to get married and have kids; they refused to buy homes or consume other material goods.

A world apart, “lying flat” and “quiet quitting” have sprouted parallel passive resistance movements among young people in the world’s top two economies, flouting assumptions that Gen Z will work just as hard as previous generations. Individual followers of the movements have their own motivations—from pandemic-era burnout to existential dread—but a shared sense economic defeatism is binding them together as they confront critics and defy workaholic cultures in China and the U.S.

The exact origins of quiet quitting are unclear, but the phenomenon took off on social media earlier this month after one TikTok user named Zaid Kahn posted a viral video explaining the practice.

West, who posted about quiet quitting as early as April, attributes her own quiet quitting experience to the pandemic. She started her job in July 2020, a few months after COVID-19 reached the U.S. and many workers were forced to work from home.

Normally, she says she would have traveled with her colleagues to new cities and attended conferences, dinners, and other events. But early in the pandemic, all she did was work with none of the additional benefits. “I realized it really wasn’t something I enjoyed doing,” she says.

West says that her work stress faded the moment she decided to quietly quit. She found fulfillment in pursuing hobbies and interests, like her YouTube channel, after wrapping up her nine-to-five. Unexpectedly, she drew more praise from her colleagues after she quietly quit, which she attributes to scaling back her check-ins with coworkers and concentrating her effort on fewer tasks.

Others should consider quietly quitting, she says, but only if they’re doing it for the right reasons.

“Consider why you are [quietly quitting] and make sure that you’re doing it so that you can put more effort into the things that are important to you,” she says.

Experts say the “quiet quitting” buzzword is new, but the forces behind it aren’t.

Stephan Meier, a professor at Columbia Business School, recently told Fortune that quiet quitting is another term for disengagement. In the past 15 years, 67% of American employees and 86% of workers globally have said they were not engaged at their jobs, according to Meier. COVID-era workplace turmoil may have caused young people to become even more detached from their jobs.

“It’s possible that this has increased somewhat after the pandemic,” Meier said.

Chinese authorities censored Luo’s Baidu post hours after it went live, but they weren’t quick enough to keep “lying flat” from zipping around China’s internet. Some online forums discussing the topic drew as many as 200,000 members.

As authorities tried to clamp down on lying flat and terms related to it, users got creative. Some posted pictures of leeks, which became a symbol of the movement because the long, slender vegetables can’t get caught in the churn of a combine harvester if they’re prone. Some philosophical manifestos on the movement also managed to escape China’s censorship apparatus temporarily, as did practical guides on how to embody lying flat principles, which included advice on how to not get married, not have kids, and live minimally.

“I think of lying flat as a silent rebellion against a culture of overpressure,” says Zak Dychtwald, CEO of consultancy Young China Group. He says lying flat has helped disrupt the “996” culture of China’s tech industry, the idea—promoted by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and other tech firms—that workers labor 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The lying flat movement inspired some tech workers to leave jobs at top firms and decamp for slower-paced lives in the countryside.

“They’re fed up with work…and the sense that young people are disposable in these large companies,” says Dychtwald.

Yige Dong, assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says that lying flat and quiet quitting were born from workers in the U.S. and China questioning intense work cultures, but there’s also a common sense that the rewards for such work are deteriorating, she says. “The Gen Z generation [in China and the U.S.] has fewer opportunities than their parents’ generation did. That’s why it seems that traditional ‘work ethic’ has been diminishing,” says Dong.

China’s economic growth has slowed in recent years amid a sweeping antitrust campaign against tech giants, government attempts to rein in a bloated property sector, and the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s COVID lockdowns and closed borders have inflicted more economic pain this year, putting the country on track to grow at its slowest pace in decades.

China’s youth are bearing the brunt of the slowdown. In July, China’s youth unemployment rate reached 19.9%, the highest ever and more than double the youth employment rate of three years ago, just as a record 10.7 million college graduates entered the workforce.

“People are trying to cope with fierce competition against the background of an economic downturn,” notes Alison Sile Chen, a former political journalist in China and doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego. “They feel really anxious…And that if they have no way to [succeed] anyway they might as well lie flat.”

In the U.S., young Americans feel increasingly anxious about the state of the economy, especially as inflation hits record highs and economists warn of a looming recession. A recent survey showed that American millennials and Gen Zers feel more unprepared to handle a potential recession than baby boomers or Gen Xers.

Kevin Antshel, a psychology professor at Syracuse University, told CBS that quiet quitting may be a temporary option for workers who want to quit altogether but are too afraid to do so in a recession.

West says she decided to quietly quit rather than subject herself to the unknowns of unemployment. “I realized that I could do something that felt more on my own terms. I could take back some of that control in my life,” West says.

Lying flat and quiet quitting have both inspired fiery backlash in their respective countries.

In China, it’s unclear exactly how popular the lying flat movement is since Chinese authorities censor social media posts about the topic. But lying flat became prominent enough to draw a rebuke from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who urged the public to participate in society rather than opt out in an op-ed published last June.

“It is necessary to prevent the stagnation of the social class, unblock the channels for upward social mobility, create opportunities for more people to become rich, and form an environment for improvement in which everyone participates, avoiding involution and lying flat,” Xi wrote.

Dong says that China’s government has taken an interest in lying flat because the movement represents a threat to China’s tightly controlled political system.

“While at the individual level this does not make a difference to the system, if many people are doing it at the same time, it has the potential to interrupt the current social order,” she says.

In the U.S., quiet quitting has also drawn detractors. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, recently wrote that quiet quitting was tantamount to “quitting life.” Kevin O’Leary, a panelist on Shark Tank, called quiet quitting the “dumbest idea” he ever heard because young people need to work long hours to build successful careers.