The CCP is Trying—and Failing—to Extinguish Defiance among Chinese Citizens– freedomhouse.org

Recent propaganda and censorship efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have revealed an urgent desire among party leadership to blunt a spirit of defiance within Chinese society. Despite the party’s attempts to curb dissent, however, China’s citizens continue to defy authority, as evidenced by recent findings of Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor (CDM).

Earlier this year, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) conducted a campaign that blamed “foreign forces” for funding the spread in China of “lying flat” (躺平), a term that has become widely used to describe the rejection of societal expectations that push individuals to strive for material and social achievement. The official media attributing the trend of lying flat to foreign interference was promptly pilloried by Chinese netizens who filled online comment sections with criticism and satire. A popular vlogger sarcastically complained that he wanted to “report” foreign forces for failing to pay him despite his tireless efforts to lie flat. These responses have all since been censored.

The CCP’s seeming obsession with curbing the lying flat mindset is worth understanding. The term’s popularity rose in response to China’s grueling “996” work culture, in which many companies expect their employees to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 6 days each week. But as the concept of lying flat has expanded, the CCP has become worried that it reflects an underlying resistance to the party’s designs for Chinese people, and that an increasing number of citizens simply don’t care about or support the idea of working harder to contribute to a more powerful state. The Communist Party’s leader Xi Jinping has explicitly spoken out against the lying flat attitude.