China’s 996 Work Culture: When 72-Hour Weeks Turn Deadly
In early 2021, a 22-year-old employee at Pinduoduo collapsed and died. The company's response? A now-deleted social media post
In early 2021, a 22-year-old employee at Pinduoduo collapsed and died. The company’s response? A now-deleted social media post that read: “Those who are at the bottom of the society earn their wages at the risk of losing their lives.”
Days later, another Pinduoduo employee jumped to their death.
These incidents weren’t outliers. They were symptoms of something deeper happening in China’s tech industry.
What 996 Actually Means
996 means exactly what it sounds like: 9am to 9pm, six days a week. That’s 12 hours a day, 72 hours a week. And it’s standard practice at companies you’ve definitely heard of – Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, ByteDance.
Think that’s extreme? Meet 007. Not the spy – the work schedule. Midnight to midnight, seven days a week. During COVID lockdowns, IT workers described their work-from-home reality as closer to 007 than anything else. Available 24/7. No extra pay.
There are variations too. 8106 (8am to 10pm, six days). 997 (9am to 9pm, seven days). The numbers have become code for “we own your life.”
Here’s the Thing About Chinese Labour Law
China’s labour laws actually cap the standard workday at eight hours, maximum 44 hours per week. Overtime is supposed to be paid extra and limited to 36 hours monthly.
In August 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Court straight up ruled 996 illegal. The case involved a worker named Li who regularly pulled 300+ hours monthly for a year, then fainted in a work bathroom and died of a heart attack during a 12-hour overnight shift.
So the law is clear. The highest court in the country said no. And yet… nothing changed. Companies keep doing it. Workers keep dying. The penalties? Barely a slap on the wrist.
Critics don’t mince words: 996 work culture is modern slavery.
What This Does to People
More than three-quarters of workers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou deal with work-related fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, sleep disorders, eating disorders, occupational stress, and zero work-life balance. A 2013 survey found 98.8% of Chinese IT workers reported health problems.
In February 2022, a 28-year-old ByteDance employee died suddenly. He’d posted on a career networking platform the night before. He was the third overwork-related death that month.
The details get worse. At Pinduoduo headquarters, floors housing over a thousand employees had eight toilet stalls. Eight. Workers queued for 20+ minutes or snuck into neighbouring buildings just to use the bathroom.
This isn’t about working hard. This is about systems designed to break people.
The Bosses Who Think This Is Fine
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and one of China’s richest men, called 996 “a huge blessing.” He told workers they should be grateful because there’s no way to achieve success without “paying extra effort and time.”
Richard Liu, who founded JD.com, dismissed critics as slackers who “weren’t his brothers.”
This attitude comes from China’s tech boom years when companies like Alibaba and Tencent grew faster than they could hire. Solution? Squeeze more hours out of existing staff. What started as occasional overtime became the entry price into China’s tech sector.
Huawei called their version “wolf culture” – fierce internal competition where workers either kill or get killed. The message: sacrifice everything or get left behind.
Then Gen Z Showed Up
China’s younger workers aren’t interested in what their bosses are selling.
March 2019: Frustrated tech workers launched 996.ICU on GitHub. The name says it all – follow the 996 schedule and you’ll end up in intensive care. The project became a list of companies practising 996, gained 100,000+ bookmarks within days, and hit number one on GitHub’s trending projects.
Chinese browsers from Tencent, Alibaba, and others immediately blocked it, calling it “illegal and fraudulent.” But the conversation had started and they couldn’t stop it.
Then came tang ping.
Lying Flat: The Rebellion
Tang ping literally means “lying flat” in Chinese. It’s young workers saying: we’re done.
April 2021, a post titled “Lying Flat Is Justice” went viral. The movement tells young professionals to opt out of the whole game – reject workplace success, reject consumer promises, reject the grind.
Because what’s the point? In Shenzhen, the median house price to annual income ratio is 45:1. No amount of overtime closes that gap. You can work yourself to death and still never afford a flat.
A recent survey by Zhaopin, a major career platform, found over 80% of white-collar workers want fair treatment and respect above everything else. They’re rejecting 996 work culture and wolf culture. They want balance. They want to be treated like humans.
Daisy Zhang, 28, left her job in China’s film industry and described lying flat for two weeks: “I stay at home and sleep and watch television series. Sometimes I go out for walks, read books, and just think a lot.” She chose to reclaim her time and mental health.
It’s not laziness. It’s survival.
The Government Doesn’t Know What to Do
China’s leadership is stuck. They need the economic growth that tech companies provide. But they’ve got an entire generation threatening to check out completely.
State media condemned tang ping as “shameful.” Censors scrubbed the phrase from Douban and Baidu. Clothing with “tangping” slogans vanished from Taobao. The message from authorities: lying flat threatens national development.
But they’ve also taken steps against extreme overtime. The top court and labour ministry detailed 10 labour dispute cases in August 2021, stating workers have legal rights to compensation and rest times.
So which is it? Stop lying flat and get back to work, or stop killing yourselves with overtime? The government wants both and can’t figure out how to get either.
Are Things Getting Better?
Some companies made changes. Vivo scrapped their ‘big/small weeks’ practice where workers alternate five and six-day weeks. ByteDance ended mandatory weekend overtime.
But here’s the catch. When ByteDance ended big-small weeks in August 2021, they cut salaries by up to 17%. Same workload, less time, less pay.
The hashtag #SalaryDropsAfterByteDanceCancelsBigSmallWeek got 500 million views on Weibo. One user posted: “They’re not capitalists if they don’t suck your blood.”
For most workers, the choice remains brutal: Accept 996 hours and earn enough to survive in expensive cities, or work reasonable hours and face a drastically lower standard of living.
Mental health professionals point out this isn’t really a choice at all.
What Business Gets Wrong
Studies show workers attempting 10 or 12-hour days make more mistakes, burn out faster, and quit more often than those working eight hours.
A 2020 study in IEEE Software found Chinese businesses follow long work hours more than American ones. Another study compared 996 culture to modern slavery, formed through “unrestricted global capitalism and a Confucian culture of hierarchy and obedience.”
The 996 model might have fuelled China’s initial tech boom, but it’s hitting limits. High turnover bleeds money. Innovation dies when people are too exhausted to think. And now an entire generation is actively choosing to disengage.
It’s not that Gen Z lacks ambition. They’re just asking a reasonable question: ambition for what?
What’s Really Happening Here
This isn’t just about work hours. It’s about two generations with completely different ideas about what makes life worth living.
The older generation lifted China out of poverty through relentless work. They see 996 as necessary sacrifice for national prosperity.
Younger workers grew up with relative comfort but face impossible housing costs and intense competition. They’re asking: sacrifice for what? So we can work ourselves to death and still never own a home?
There’s a direct line from 996 work culture to the lying flat movement. When hard work stops leading to success, when effort stops correlating with reward, people stop trying. That’s not giving up. That’s a rational response to a broken system.
The Real Problem
The Chinese government needs productive workers for economic growth. But productivity requires more than logged hours. It requires engagement, creativity, belief that the work matters. You can’t force that through censorship or nationalist slogans.
Companies that built empires on 996 culture now face workers who refuse to play by those rules. Some are adapting, however reluctantly. Others keep going as before, betting that economic necessity will override workers’ desire for better conditions.
That’s a bad bet.
What Comes Next
Can China’s work culture evolve before it completely alienates its youngest workers? Early signs aren’t good. Despite court rulings and public outcry, enforcement stays weak. Despite some companies officially ending 996 work culture, the underlying attitudes persist.
But something shifted. Workers are naming the problem, organizing (however informally), making choices that prioritize wellbeing over endless hours. Whether they call it tang ping or lying flat or just choosing sanity, the message is consistent: this system is broken and we’re opting out.
For businesses watching from outside China, the lesson is simple: extreme overwork delivers short-term gains but isn’t sustainable. Eventually workers push back. As the human cost rises, it becomes impossible to ignore. In the end, a generation decides lying flat beats being worked to death.
China’s 996 work culture promised prosperity through sacrifice. Instead it’s producing a generation that would rather have less and keep themselves intact.
That’s not failed ambition. That’s people recognizing their limits and choosing to stay human.
The real divide isn’t between 996 and Gen Z resistance. It’s between a system that treats people as resources to be depleted and a generation that refuses to be used up. One of them has to give. And given that you can’t force an entire generation to care about something they’ve rationally decided isn’t worth it, the smart money isn’t on the system winning.
Sources
- Wikipedia – 996 working hour system
- Wikipedia – Tang ping (lying flat movement)
- BBC News – The young Chinese ‘lying flat’ to cope with modern pressures
