How ‘lying flat’ went from a niche subculture to mainstream phenomenon

In late April, China’s top intelligence agency claimed that foreign forces were weaponising the concept of “lying flat” to dispel young people’s “belief in striving” and undermine social values.
Once a niche subculture, “lying flat” has evolved into a mainstream phenomenon over the past five years.
“Lying flat” became a buzzword on Chinese social media around 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, the phrase was usually applied to people who had completely dropped out of the rat race, choosing to survive on odd jobs.
But now, it applies to a broader cross-section of society – from successful professionals and middle-aged entrepreneurs to risk-averse officials – as they avoid extra work to survive an era of intense competition with diminishing returns.
In a social media post, the Ministry of State Security accused unnamed overseas groups of funding influencers to constrain China’s development by conducting “lying flat brainwashing”.
While the intelligence agency blamed external enemies, a flood of social media comments showed how many users felt their fatigue was actually home-grown.
“So my exhaustion isn’t from overwork – it was the CIA all along,” one user wrote.
This official condemnation of lying flat is not new. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly exhorted young people to find chances to “eat bitterness”, or undergo hardship.
In his report to the Communist Party’s national congress in 2022, Xi urged the youth to “aspire to be a good young person of the new era who has ideals, dares to take responsibility, can eat bitterness and is willing to work hard”.
However, millions of young people seem to have ignored the advice. According to recruiting platform 51job’s 2025 report, nearly 60 per cent of workers aged 30 or under refuse to take on management roles – a 31 per cent jump from 2018. Forty-five per cent say that the salary increases on offer are not enough to compensate for the extra effort such positions demand.
Emma Gu, 27, a middle school biology teacher in the southern city of Guangzhou, described herself as “typically lying flat”.
Once an overachiever, juggling her teaching with duties from the Communist Youth League, her relentless workload led to health issues. After diagnoses of thyroid nodules, anaemia and depression, she dumped her extra responsibilities last year.
“I don’t go for honours or awards any more,” she said. “I do my job, but anything extra? I hear it, but I don’t do it. This might be deemed lying flat and passive by the older generation.”

Lily, a thirty-something former accountant at a “Big Four” firm, has a similar outlook.
After years of climbing the ladder from Shanghai to Canada to the United States, she reached the director level. Her US employer offered to make her a partner, but she declined. “The marginal value of rank and salary gets lower and lower,” she said, choosing instead to learn the piano and volunteer with her daughter. “Time is the scarcest resource now.”
The signs of withdrawal are apparent beyond the workforce.
In a social media support group of more than 400 parents in southern China’s tech metropolis of Shenzhen, the main topic is not grades, but “school refusal”. Frustrated parents share stories of children who simply refuse to engage with the country’s highly competitive education system.
A report released on May 25 by Dogo, a Beijing-based psychological counselling platform for adolescents, said that “lying flat” was often a reaction to trauma. Memory loss, slow thinking and an inability to sit still were not signs of laziness, but the body’s reaction to an environment it could no longer process.
Adolescents aged 10 to 19 are now a high-risk group for mental health disorders, with 15 to 25 per cent showing symptoms of depression, according to a report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Psychology in April last year.
Experts have suggested strengthening mental health infrastructure by creating institutional support systems that allow individuals to take breaks without stigma; overhauling labour policies to prioritise workers’ well-being and ensure a healthier work-life balance; and redefining success beyond wealth and status.
But these psychological shifts do not exist in a vacuum. They are symptoms of a broader economic recalibration.
According to Jincheng Zhang, a senior communications associate at the New York-based National Committee on US-China Relations, lying flat can be seen as a way to cope with limited upwards mobility, rather than mere apathy.
“Given the volatility of career development options, with limited or rare opportunities for high rewards, young workers may feel they can counterbalance their reality by reaching for lower consumption goals, postponing life transitions of a larger scale and even avoiding high-intensity, highly competitive work environments,” she wrote in an article last month.
Zhang attributed the mindset to policy decisions, noting that top-down policies and shrinking civil society had undermined market confidence.
Measures under the banner of “common prosperity”, such as dismantling the after-school tutoring industry and regulating big tech firms, had hampered development, a situation worsened by policies like zero-Covid, she wrote.
“The combination of these macro-level shocks increases ambivalence regarding career prospects, making the withdrawal dynamic more prominent,” Zhang added.

While Beijing is investing heavily in artificial intelligence and semiconductors, these sectors cannot absorb the millions displaced from traditional industries.
This displacement is being felt by young and old alike.
The official urban youth unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds, excluding students, hovered at 16.3 per cent in April.
However, this figure excludes people who have given up looking for jobs.
Zhang Dandan, deputy dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, estimated that as many as 16 million young people could fit into this category, calling it a “hidden crisis” of “invisible unemployed”. And this summer, a record 12.7 million graduates will enter the job market.
Meanwhile, recruitment data released in late 2025 showed that over half of unemployed professionals aged 40 and above faced “systemic barriers” to re-entering the workforce. This phenomenon has its own name, the “curse of 35” – a common informal age limit for hiring.
Even for entrepreneurs, who might be seen as prototypical go-getters – or “bitterness eaters” – the risk of making a wrong move might outweigh the potential returns of making the right move.
A factory owner said she had travelled across China’s less-developed inland regions – including Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi and her native southwestern province of Sichuan – over the past three years and seen a widespread economic slowdown and unfinished buildings.
The more you do, the more you lose
Factory owner
Late last year, facing a volatile international landscape and a collapse in market confidence, she opted for a strategic retreat to preserve her remaining assets. “I lie flat too. The more you do, the more you lose,” she said.
The ethos has even spread into the government and academia, prompting a 2021 warning from Xi in the party’s flagship theory journal, calling for efforts to prevent social stagnation and promote upwards mobility.
Two years later, Xi cautioned cadres against lying flat, leading to a nationwide campaign targeting grass-roots officials.
However, interviews with risk-averse civil servants have revealed a widespread fear of making mistakes in their work and a lack of flexibility, worsened by tightening oversight from the party’s formidable disciplinary bodies and an endless anti-corruption campaign. Experts also argue that excessive centralisation and micromanagement stifle innovation and creativity, leading to passivity and conformity.
In academia, universities have been working to meet Beijing’s call to develop a hi-tech workforce by cutting arts and humanities enrolments while emphasising science and technology majors. According to the Ministry of Education, more than 3,600 liberal arts programmes were cut or merged nationwide in the 2024 to 2025 academic year.
One dean of foreign languages at a university in Guangdong province, whose school is on the verge of dissolution, spent the past year submitting reform proposals to integrate AI and regional studies – another government priority – into the curriculum. However, his new university president repeatedly refused to even meet him, let alone approve his plans.
Aged 55, he is wondering whether to retire early or simply do the bare minimum at work for the next five years. “What can I do with a president like this?” the dean said. “I’d rather resign. I don’t want to be the last dean of this school, remembered as the one who let it die on my watch.”
Despite the state’s fear that young people are abandoning their ambitions, the response to a recent video suggests that some see lying flat as a temporary decision.
Days after the Ministry of State Security’s warning, a video on lying flat was released by Alan Macfarlane, an 85-year-old Cambridge anthropologist who has 2.3 million followers on social media service RedNote.
Released on China’s Youth Day, May 4, he likened Chinese people to bamboo.
“When a great gust of wind comes … it leans over, it absorbs the shock, lies flat almost, and then when the gust has gone, it goes back up.”
By invoking the philosophy of Chinese martial arts – of yielding to an overpowering force rather than standing “brittle and breaking” – Macfarlane reframed the phenomenon. “One country [and the individuals] which I believe will really be able to absorb, lie flat, and then come back … will be China.”
The post received more than 100,000 likes and was widely circulated on multiple social media platforms.
“I was moved to tears,” one user wrote. “The state says we are infiltrated by foreign forces; the professor says we are bamboo. Finally, someone acknowledges the ‘wind’ is simply too strong right now.”
Another said: “Lying flat is not surrendering. We are just momentarily bent – eventually, we will snap back.”