Some young Chinese refuse to get caught up in the promotion race and want to enjoy a simple life without sacrificing their work life. This trend is reflected in what could be described as casual attire at work, with some even going to the office in their pajamas.
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By Stéphane Lagarde, RFI correspondent in Beijing
We've all heard of Casual Friday. But now it is celebrated every day, and is even giving rise to a selfie competition on social media. Especially on Xiaohongshu, the Chinese Instagram, where people take photos at work in casual clothes or even in bathrobes.
“Beggar chic” style
Tops, but also fluffy pajama pants combined with a sports jacket. Often the outfit does not match well. It is not necessarily in good taste – the combination of orange socks and sandals is in fashion, for example – but the “beggar chic” style is giving rise to a veritable fashion parade on social networks. Last month, a surfer with the pseudonym “Kendou S” photographed herself on Douyin – China's version of TikTok – wearing a brown dress and sweater, pajama pants and mittens with holes in them.
The hashtag “work clothes” immediately caught on. The idea is to have fun, of course, but also to make fun of a little, or at least distance yourself from jobs that are sometimes poorly paid, sometimes boring, sometimes both. “I don't think it's worth spending money on work clothes, after all I sit in a corner all day,” a designer from Wuhan, central China, told the New York Times. These outfits are also an opportunity to assert yourself, to simply say: “I do what I want, when I want,” or “my life doesn't stop at work.”
“Tang Ping” and “no future”
“I don't care” at work are not necessarily liked by employers. Some fear that it will damage the company's image. Sometimes there are also comments from office colleagues. But it doesn't matter, this movement is also a form of ” “silent protest” for those who have a stable job. A trend that is part of a more general movement. There was the “Tang Ping”, which in Chinese means “doing the plank”, for those who prefer to wait and see what happens, before than committing to a poorly paid and/or exhausting job.
There was also “Bailan”, an expression that means “let rot” or “defraud”, for those who are looking for a stable job, but refuse to enter into a competition or the illusion of a promising career given the slowdown of the Chinese economy and the scarcity of interesting jobs, if not jobs at all. That is why today people dress informally at work, which manifests, if not a “no future”, at least a counterculture in opposition to the vision of the previous generation, which threw itself headlong into overtime and the race for the promotions.
Rejection of “996”
Most of these young people and not so young people just want to live a simple life, without pressures, trying to find a minimum of meaning in life. “The Tang Ping is not at all against the party, but against capitalist conditions,” says Jean-Louis Rocca. “An entire sector of society can no longer endure the competitive game on which labor relations were based. Many Chinese “They choose to break away from this logic, dedicate themselves to less competitive activities or return to live with their parents in the countryside. They refuse to get married and do not want to have children,” adds this professor at the International Research Center of the Paris Institute of Political Studies ( CERI).
This movement mainly affects the middle class, but it also worries the authorities. Studies on the subject are published in Chinese universities, sometimes critical of those who see young people as simple lazy people. “Work had gone completely crazy,” continues the CERI sociologist, “people worked in “996” shifts (from 9 in the morning to 9 at night, 6 days a week), with extremely strict hierarchical relationships. And today there is a fringe of society that rejects, or at least questions, what was the heart of the Chinese economy before Covid: a society based on competition, ever more and consumerism.
“The 3.12 movement”
The economic slowdown is giving wings to this emancipation movement. The videos broadcast on In reality, these demonstrations have always existed, but they used to be repressed by censors. The novelty is that they also affect executives. On March 12, a flood of complaints in Excel sheets posted by employees of marketing and advertising agencies on the Tencent platform denounced working conditions at thousands of companies on the East Coast.
The “3.12 movement” later spread to other sectors: online games, high technology, big data and influencer agencies. When they saw these complaints appearing on the Internet, many executives in the sector asked their HR departments to try to eliminate these boards, which caused an escalation of conflicts,” explains Wang, contacted by RFI. For the head of an events company , “we must not play the ostrich, but rather take advantage of the opportunity to face what is going wrong, at a time when many agencies have closed their doors in recent years and budgets are reduced.”
Complaint books 2.0
A “table of salary statistics of various sectors of the civil engineering group” recently appeared on the Internet, “Professor Li” notes in a tweet. The document lists the benefits, salary levels and hours of major construction companies across the country. “Many of these companies have wage arrears and often force their employees to work unpaid overtime,” notes this China network observer, citing the case of a Guangzhou company that works for the Chinese railways and that paid its workers three months late.
“This is also clearly the case for some office workers. I was surprised, because apart from gossip, most of the comments were filled with deep resentment,” says Mr. Ma. “It is probably related to the general slowdown and high staff turnover, which increases the number of complaints.” , insists this director of an advertising agency. These 2.0 complaint notebooks from the March 12 movement and the following days disappeared as quickly as they appeared, deleted or blocked for “failing to comply with the platform's guidelines.”
