Watch: Why 'quiet quitting' was well underway in China before the rest of the world caught on
(youtube.com)
You may have heard about "quiet quitting" this summer. The term, which means doing what's required at work and no more, went viral on the TikTok app after a New York software engineer posted a video on the trend.
Yet the rejection of hustle culture started in China long before it was popularized in the West.
"I talk with my friends, and they often use that term like 'tang ping,' I really want to lie down and I don't want to do my job and don't want to achieve something," said Dian Gu, who works as a content specialist for an internet company in China.
Since 2021, the internet in China has been awash with the phrases tang ping, which means "lying flat" in Mandarin, and more recently bai lan, which means "let it rot." This has coincided with many young people in China becoming increasingly frustrated with both their personal and professional lives.
Unlike most countries, China has continued to pursue a zero-Covid strategy, which requires strict and sudden lockdowns and extensive testing for cities experiencing outbreaks, confining hundreds of millions of Chinese people to their homes.
As a result, the economy has slowed and unemployment is rising. The labor market has shrunk since 2019, and there is fierce competition for white-collar jobs.
"We could definitely link this wave of quiet quitting and rethinking work, to an inherent lack of satisfaction with what is out there in terms of job availability," said Maria Kordowicz, an associate professor in organizational behavior at the University of Nottingham.
So is China's hard-working culture about to change? Watch our video above to find out more.
#CNBC #QuietQuitting #jobs
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Yet the rejection of hustle culture started in China long before it was popularized in the West.
"I talk with my friends, and they often use that term like 'tang ping,' I really want to lie down and I don't want to do my job and don't want to achieve something," said Dian Gu, who works as a content specialist for an internet company in China.
Since 2021, the internet in China has been awash with the phrases tang ping, which means "lying flat" in Mandarin, and more recently bai lan, which means "let it rot." This has coincided with many young people in China becoming increasingly frustrated with both their personal and professional lives.
Unlike most countries, China has continued to pursue a zero-Covid strategy, which requires strict and sudden lockdowns and extensive testing for cities experiencing outbreaks, confining hundreds of millions of Chinese people to their homes.
As a result, the economy has slowed and unemployment is rising. The labor market has shrunk since 2019, and there is fierce competition for white-collar jobs.
"We could definitely link this wave of quiet quitting and rethinking work, to an inherent lack of satisfaction with what is out there in terms of job availability," said Maria Kordowicz, an associate professor in organizational behavior at the University of Nottingham.
So is China's hard-working culture about to change? Watch our video above to find out more.
#CNBC #QuietQuitting #jobs
---
Subscribe: http://cnb.cx/2wuoARM
CNBC International TV: https://cnb.cx/2NGytpz
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cnbcinternat...
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/cnbcinterna...
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CNBCi
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst China is the country where new things are coming, whether good or bad. They have invested heavily in being the leaders in many fields, at the cost of individuals, but they have built a powerful country. The problem: a "democrature" showing a bright facade but shaky foundations soon or later may collapse or at least make individuals think about what they are dong and if work for it is worthy or not. So, no surprise the "quiet quitting" started there and that there is even a vocabulary for it. Who can blame young people who feel more and more pieces of a cog in the machine, subject to credit scores, trying to maintain appearance and image instead of being real and human? Who can blame someone who feels there is more to life than work for something which is more and more difficult to believe? Anyone working with or around Chinese expats know they like to greet other with "let's get rich" greetings. This is another image and appearance but the reality is there is a belief shift on what is work to live and what is to be just a part of a system where work is more important than life. This can be blamed on the Chinese system? Not necessarily as we see this in South Korea a country where work is considered a moral virtue and its exigences more and more strict to the point of a younger generation being on the brink of exhaustion. Capitalism, democratures, socialisms, systems need to change to make of our societies more human, so we recover the dignity of work and responsibility, the joy of creation and collaboration to make new things.