They've swallowed an ideological fallacy that simply working your pants off for long hours means you will win. The USSR had the same disease, if they just worked their people 20% harder than the west did then they would inevitably be more productive and economically 'win'. It's variation of the lump of labour fallacy.

Don't fall for it. It's thinking like this that leads to managers optimising for the wrong metrics. Hours worked is clearly the wrong metric. Companies don't exist to simply employ workers for long hours, and thinking that way leads you down the wrong path right from the start. You need to look at where the value actually comes from, and this is sometimes subtle and not at all obvious.

Here's a challenge. A taxi driver in London earns about 4x what a taxi driver in Beijing does, in objective international value terms. Why? What factors might lead to that difference? If your value system can't answer that question, then it's wrong. They do quite legitimately earn 4x as much because the work they are doing is worth 4x as much, and there must be a reason.