The tang ping phenomenon defying the Chinese dream
This article was published in The Oxford Review of Books, Spring 2024 Edition.
Zhang Xinyang was a child prodigy who earned national acclaim for completing his doctorate at just 16. Despite his pre-eminence, and the bright future he had been primed for, at 28 he made the seemingly regressive decision to move back in with his parents. Renouncing the prodigal status of his youth, he declared that ‘sitting around and doing nothing’ was ‘the key to lifelong happiness.’
Zhang is representative of a curious phenomenon which has swept across China in the past two years. Young adults boasting prestigious university degrees, well-paid professional jobs, and successful lives have quit en masse. Many have moved back into their childhood homes, vowing to live off either their parents’ life savings or government benefits. They ardently refuse to function as ‘productive’ members of society. Beyond the workplace, the same young adults are also rejecting domestic expectations by refusing to have children.
This is the tang ping (躺平) phenomenon. Literally known as ‘lying flat’, it encapsulates giving up, embracing immobility, and refusing productivity. The New York Times characterises it as a ‘nascent counterculture movement’ that involves ‘lying down and doing as little as possible’. But beyond that, it is a subtle protest against social, economic and political conditions in China: it objects to the burden placed on young Chinese adults by the rapidly ageing population and to poor economic and employment conditions. Significantly, it also objects to the governmental repression of the freedom of speech, expression and information. By refusing to bow down to the societal pressure to be productive, these young people are rebelling against Chinese ideals of hard work, family and filial piety.
It began in April 2021, when a post on the Chinese social media platform Baidu titled ‘Lying Flat Is Justice’ went viral. Its author, Luo Huazhong, was disillusioned with the monotony of modern working life in his job as a factory worker. After quitting, he spontaneously decided to cycle 1300 miles from Sichuan Province to Tibet, surviving on $60 a month from his savings and odd jobs. Labelling this lifestyle ‘lying flat’ and calling on others to do the same, Luo deemed the hyper-competition and stresses of contemporary life to be unnecessary. Luo’s post was soon celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anti-consumerist manifesto, though ironically as a call to inaction rather than action. In a society where more overt forms of protest like labour activism are usually suppressed, young people found catharsis in such online expression. The phrase tang ping quickly caught on, resonating with the younger generation’s woes.
With youth employment reaching a record 21.3% in June 2023, and with desirable jobs in short supply, poor employment conditions have ignited the tang ping movement. The young adults who grew up under China’s one-child policy are the recipients of increased economic pressure. According to the Confucian values of filial piety, young adults must provide for their families or be perceived as failures. But caring for six parents and grandparents is a heavy burden for a single child to shoulder. Long working hours have added to mass dissatisfaction. The popularity of the term ‘996’ refers to China’s so-called 996 working culture, where many work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, despite its illegality. Yet the tang ping movement shows how, for some, such hyper-productivity has since waned into a lack of desire for any productivity.
China’s social credit system is further stoking social restlessness, placing undue pressure on young individuals to be ‘socially responsible’. And China’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy, which has meant prolonged lockdowns and deteriorating mental health over the past three years, has led such restlessness to a crescendo. Combined with a gloomy outlook for China’s economic future, a perfect storm of dissatisfaction has brewed, culminating in a resistance movement which defies and endangers the country’s long-held prosperity narrative.
Recognising the potential contagion of the tang ping movement, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued strongly-worded official responses soon after Luo’s initial post, while many news channels similarly quickly admonished the phenomenon. The state news agency, Xinhua, ruled that ‘choosing to “lie flat” in the face of pressure is not only unjust, but also shameful.’ Nanfang Daily meanwhile, the representative of Guangdong’s CCP leadership, expressed disgust over the notion of ‘lying flat’, concerned that the prospect of resignation might become prophetic. ‘At any time, struggle is always the brightest base colour of youth,’ it argued, parroting the social burden often placed on young adults to fight for the nation’s prosperity. A social media crackdown followed the official state response: Luo’s original post disappeared from the Baidu platform, the search function for ‘tang ping’ on WeChat (the Chinese version of Whatsapp) was disabled, and multiple discussion groups on Chinese forums relating to the phenomenon were shut down. Products featuring the Chinese characters for tang ping, including T-shirts and smartphone cases disappeared from shelves.
Beyond this fear of its infectious, shameful laziness, tang ping also creates worrying demographic concerns. China is experiencing a dwindling labour force and an overstretched social welfare system which is collapsing under a rapidly ageing population. As such, President Xi has recently pushed for a three-child policy, encouraging women to return to the home; however, tang ping’s blatant encouragement of childlessness defies this idea. This wholesale rejection of workplace success and social values is a flagrant denial of President Xi’s zhongguomeng (中國夢), or ‘Chinese dream’. Though this movement is explicitly passive and advocates for doing as little as possible, it is quietly revolutionary.
Despite their best efforts, the party-state has not succeeded in diminishing the movement: tang ping has since become a rallying cry for millennials and Gen Zers resisting the pressures of the capitalist rat race. Xiang Biao, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford, called tang ping culture a turning point for China. Noting the inexplicable pressure young people are experiencing, he observes that ‘material betterment is no longer the single most important source of meaning’ in their lives. Faced with economic stagnation, lack of social mobility and significant pressure to adhere to traditional values, many young adults are witnessing the narratives they were raised on crumbling and disintegrating. It is no longer true that if you work hard enough, you will succeed; that if you relentlessly study and get into a good university, you are guaranteed prosperity. The collective revelation that society has failed them has liberated many young people from self-imposed burdens and pressure. Ripples thus continue to spread throughout Chinese society.
Realising that suppression and crackdown have been largely ineffectual, the party-state has adopted a seemingly conciliatory attitude. In an official article from People’s Daily, it writes, ‘this is by no means a […] harsh criticism of the tang ping people. Choosing a comfortable life out of physical and mental considerations should be understood, and choosing a slow-paced life after full consideration also deserves more respect.’ This is an evident step away from the crackdown seen after Luo’s viral post. The article continues to argue for the state’s obligation to ‘give these young people more attention through the joint efforts of the country, society, schools and other parties’. Such rhetoric demonstrates the pragmatism of the Chinese government, as it seeks to avoid the radicalisation of its young people.
This mirrors a recent trend of China cautiously allowing certain forms of protest. A paper by Yao Li using a data set of 1418 protests shows that the Chinese state permits some space for protest, revealing that nearly two-thirds of protests were actually tolerated by authorities. With that said, it remains unclear how the CCP and President Xi will confront the ‘lying flat’ movement. Other than suppression, the only way for the Party and its President to maintain political legitimacy would be to provide new social and economic opportunities for younger generations — difficult, as global demand remains in a post-Covid slump.
While, for now, the CCP may be conciliatory towards the movement, the evolution of tang ping could change this. In 2023, Chinese college graduates began to popularise being ‘zombie-style’ on campus. A Washington Post investigation found graduation photos where students were ‘sprawled on the ground, their faces covered by their tasselled caps’, protesting the perceived uselessness of their degrees and the non-guarantee of a good job. A new term, bai lan (擺爛), translated as ‘let it rot’, is also now rising in popularity. Conveying a deeper sense of pessimism than ‘lying flat’, it seems to actively encourage embracing a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around. As China’s economy labours under high unemployment, some young people are deliberately trying to get fired from their jobs so they can enjoy contractual compensation from their companies, and ‘rot away’. Not only does this echo proponents of tang ping, but it may also be even more radical, as bai lan actively seeks to overturn the Chinese social order, instead of merely advocating for passivity.
In the whirlwind of moral panic and government crackdown, whether tang ping will grow into a significant oppositional movement remains to be seen. The future of the phenomenon rests on whether the government can successfully convince its young people that hope is on the horizon, and whether their economic and social vexations can be ameliorated. But one thing is certain: China’s youth are not happy with how things are now. If there is little meaningful change to the status quo, creative forms of protest will continue — perhaps the next movement will be more menacing than simply ‘lying flat’ or ‘letting it rot’.
Art Credits: Eloise Cooke
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