@samuelszuchan: In 2021, a two-word phrase got banned in China. Four years later, it has five successors and nobody can stop any of them. It started when Luo Huazhong posted "Lying Flat Is Justice" on Baidu Tieba. Within weeks, the post was deleted. A state editorial called lying flat "shameful." An anchor went on Bilibili and asked whether young people now expected no pressure at all. Then someone at the very top warned against "involution and lying flat" in the flagship theory journal. By the time leadership is publicly arguing against your meme, your meme has won. Every official rebuttal ratified the term it was trying to bury. By 2022, tang ping had a sequel. Bai lan: "let it rot," which goes further by actively embracing decline instead of merely opting out. In March 2023 came Kong Yiji literature, named after a 1919 Lu Xun story about a failed imperial exam scholar too proud to take manual work. Young graduates started calling themselves modern Kong Yijis, the "long gown" being their useless degree. An editorial told them to take off the gown and work harder. That only made the meme spread further. By 2025, a new variant: lao shu ren, "rat people," young workers who proudly do as little as possible. Each new word makes the next one easier. You don't get a march. You get a vocabulary, and the vocabulary multiplies.

Sam Szuchan

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Wednesday 24 June 2026 14:00:00 GMT