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Comment by re | Hacker News Reader

>laying flat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

This is a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world, including in the west and Japan (NEETs, Hikikomori).

> a phenomenon we see in the entire developed world, or possibly the entire world

No. The difference is the talented and otherwise ambitious are being sacrificed by an older generation to an exceptional degree in China. That's happening elsewhere, too. But because the political systems are not dictatorships, they're able to adapt.

No, NEET stands for "Not Employed, Educating, or Training" and Hikikomori translates literally to "Pulling Back In". Both phenomena result in the individual abdicating his productivity in deference to pursuits such as resolving crises and introspection.

Tang Ping on the other hand is a phenomenon where the individual only produces as much as his environment demands of him. If he contracted with his employer to work 9 to 5, he will work 9 to 5 and not a second more. If his work description is producing Powerpoint slides, he will produce Powerpoint slides and only Powerpoint slides. If he is remote work, he will quit rather than come into the office. He will then use the freed up time and energy on other pursuits he deems worthy.

In other words the Homo Sovieticus.

The Soviet work ethic was "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work". It wasn't about doing the bare minimum for your job, it was about finding creative ways to do much less than the bare minimum.

This goes by many different names in many different countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

So Tang ping is quiet quitting, i pretty much do the same 95% of the time. The boss pays me from 9 to 5 so once its 5 and no important deadline i stop at 5 and live my life.

Tanping is just slacking. Tanping kids still work. But it's still the same phenonmenon as the developed world, PRC single kids who grew up with silver spoon and high expectations realizing that they're pretty mid, and can't out compete their "betters". So they slack and take life easier. It's basically the normal distribution in every western workplace. Workers with prospects still grind to work their way up the (involution) rat race . Western media portrays it as big deal, but it's not even western "antiwork" work level of subversive.

Emerging PRC analogues to NEETs/Hikikomori are "full time kids". TLDR is high savings rate and culture = kids live with parents and do bumfuck while looking for jobs they think are their level. Some will settle for employment beneath them, some will live off their parents dime if their parents can support it. Cause is PRC went from single digit to 60% tertiary rate in last 20 years, there's too much talent/competition last few years as graduating classes got larger and larger but not enough jobs uni kids want.

I think it's a bit more serious than that. Those self same "mid" kids would've had no problems meeting expectations if they'd been born 10 or 20 years ago because China was experiencing one of the most unprecedented growth periods in history.

If growth stalls but expectations of what "success" looks like in life remain the same then inevitably the more rational amongst them will look and see that just achieving a "normal" life seems incredibly difficult.

Those same mid kids would likely work a medicore blue collar job but be able to afford real estate after a few years of saving while the market was low. Some of them might be lucky and have first mover entreprenured their way to being million/billionaires despite not being very bright (like Ma). Same lament as kids in west when their parents worked mid jobs and could raise a family. Dual income young professional households who can't buy a house while their parents without degrees have multipe + land in cottage country. Now PRC kids dealing with same shit kids in west are, academic inflation + increase cost of living + easy speculative R/E wealth is gone. Meanwhile no one wants to do "hard" work because they spend too much time in school to do manual labour. They want top 10% income air conditioned office jobs befitting their degree.

I'm not saying it's not serious, it's also not particularly special to PRC. Like the few tanping kids I hear about IRL in PRC are like your typical western kids with comfortably wealthy boomer parents who can afford to fuck around because they got safety net/inheritance down the line. Everyone else grinding while joking about tanping, like antiwork folks in the west bitch about their conditions, but eat continue to eat shit all the same.

the difference is that there isn't 1 billion people in the west -- US (330M) + Europe (500M) still isn't close. lots of space in the US to move to, also.

and the ability to be extremely vocal about it -- which could get you sent to jail or otherwise ruin your life via social credit scores.

point is, the kids in China have it notably rough.

The youth in china are overwhelmingly overeducated _relative_ to their economic structure.

Only because there is a term for it in Chinese, it doesn't mean this problem unique to China in any way. And it also didn't start in 2022 when "quiet quitting" became popular, it's a tale as old as time.

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