Thubten Samphel for East Asia Gazette 9 June 2021
Something is happening in China.
It is not a revolution, nor a movement. It is a new attitude to life. This new attitude is coalescing into revulsion at crony capitalism and the hectic pace of life in China where money is king and the rest counts for nothing.
This new attitude which is spreading among Chinese in their twenties and thirties is termed “lie flatism” or “do nothing.”
The theology of do-nothing-ism is “don’t work, don’t buy real estate, don’t shop, don’t marry and don’t have children.”
We don’t know how many young people in China embrace this individual or collective turn towards asceticism or austerity but the New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV), which broke the story on 4th June this year, the 31st anniversary of the pro-democracy movement, says the “trend is growing.”
As reported by NTDTV, a Chinese netizen says, “No matter how hard you work, you cannot get rich. You are merely a tool that other people use, and discard when it’s worn out. Think it over; indeed, we don’t need to be so tired.”
Another netizen adds, “The greatest devaluation in our society is not the devaluation of our currency, but the devaluation of our efforts. This is the most desperate.”
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