China | A new Silicon Valley
Chinese officials are encouraging office workers not to work so hard
FOR MUCH of the Western world, the two-day weekend is sacrosanct. In China, the right to rest for two days each week is not a given. Many students say goodbye to the concept when they start high school. Overtime is sometimes compulsory for white-collar workers, especially in the go-go world of tech. In 2019 Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, an internet giant, famously defended the “996” work culture—9am to 9pm, six days a week— as “a huge blessing”.
But in recent months a new phenomenon has emerged, as big firms across China have begun to make employees leave the office earlier. Midea, an appliance giant, has launched a campaign against unnecessary overtime, sending workers home by 6:20pm each day. Its boss said: “More than 95% of overtime is performative.” Managers at DJI, a drone maker, known for long hours, have started clearing the office at 9pm (the deadline drew criticism online for still being too late).
These new policies align with two of the Chinese state’s current priorities. One is to try to curb a phenomenon known as neijuan—often translated as “involution”. People use the term to describe a situation in which extra input no longer yields more output, like running to stand still. The government wants to prevent this intense, self-harming competition. Perhaps not surprisingly, the new policy has met plenty of cynicism from involuted workers. One newspaper summarised their online snark with the question: “Are the companies that long enforced brutal overtime now going to lead the fight against involution?” Some point to Europe’s new ban on products made with forced labour, including “excessive overtime”, as the motivation for export companies to take action.
The second priority is to give people more time off in order to help bring about the much-needed switch in the economy away from exports and infrastructure towards consumption. In March the government presented a new “special action plan” to increase domestic demand, vowing to deal with “prominent pain points such as the prevalence of overtime culture”, and to protect “rest and vacation rights and interests”. It increased the number of public holidays this year by two days. Getting people to eat out and spend money is difficult if they are stuck at their desk. Many people are receptive to the moves. Deaths from suspected overwork at companies such as Pinduoduo and ByteDance have sparked anger. Tech workers refer to themselves as niuma, or beasts of burden. Though the nation’s top court in 2021 declared the “996” schedule illegal, enforcement of the ruling has been lax. Some firms still have a “big-week, small week” system, whereby employees alternate five- and six-day work weeks. Many of these trends are visible in Haidian, home to Beijing’s Silicon Valley. Ms Tang is leaving her work at a cloud-computing company at around 9:30pm. She used to think working late was normal, but now says her younger colleagues are less tolerant of it. In a tough economy, however, they may have little choice. “When the economy is good, you can talk about employees’ happiness,” she says. She recently moved to her new job because it is less relentless, and she often gets off by 7pm. Ms Li has just finished a late dinner at McDonald’s, across the street from a stream of shuttle buses dropping workers at the subway station. After burning out at an e-commerce firm, she too was seeking balance. The 36year-old took a six-month break, but is back at an internet firm. Of her 15 days of annual leave last year, she took six. She says friends her age don’t want to subject their children to the same rat race, if they even have them. “It’s not just the financial pressure. You don’t see the point of having kids, because you may not be living a very good life yourself.”
Chinese warships circumnavigate another island: Australia
Having built the world’s largest navy, China is keen to show it off. But officials from Australia and New Zealand have been startled in recent days by the way it has been flaunting itself in Oceania. On February 21st a commercial pilot flying over the Tasman Sea received a surprise warning from a Chinese navy task-force in international waters that it was engaging in live-fire drills. Airlines scrambled to divert planes. Since then, the two Chinese warships and one supply vessel have staged an unprecedented circumnavigation of Australia, fuelling political debate about a power that once seemed distant.
The task force includes a 10,000-tonne cruiser of a type that China hailed—with justification—as a “leap forward” in its naval modernisation when it joined service in 2020 (the year the Pentagon said China’s navy had surpassed its own in size). The ships may have been joined by a nuclear-powered submarine: in the past 15 years, China has been churning these out at the rate of nearly one a year, the Pentagon reports. China is not accused of behaving illegally, but one Australian intelligence chief, Andrew Shearer, said some of its activities “seem designed to be provocative”. This is the farthest south China has ever sent its navy for training. The firing drills seemed designed to highlight its ability to project force far from home. And they appeared to show indifference to the impact. Australia and New Zealand have complained that they did not get sufficient warning about the live firing.
Planning for the exercises may have predated Donald Trump’s election as America’s president in November 2024. But the timing of them, as America turns its back on European allies, has added to anxieties in Australia and New Zealand about their own security in the second Trump term. China may want to show that not only can it sustain its ships for long periods at sea, but also, in a conflict, interfere with the sea lanes that Australia relies on, says Jennifer Parker, a former naval officer now at the Australian National University.
In Australia the Chinese navy’s activities are causing rows ahead of federal elections, due within weeks. The centre-left Labor government, led by Anthony Albanese, says it has “stabilised” relations with China, which in the past couple of years has lifted restrictions imposed in 2020 on Australian exports worth more than A$20bn ($13bn) annually. China hawks in the opposition centre-right Liberal Party complain that Labor has gone too soft on China in order to restore that trade.
During Australia’s spell in the doghouse—for daring to call for an inquiry into the origins of covid-19—it found other buyers for its coal, barley and the like, enabling it to achieve a record trade surplus in 2022. But its concerns about China’s military behaviour kept growing. Australian officials acknowledge that their own armed forces operate in international waters and airspace close to China. But China’s response is sometimes dangerous. Last month a Chinese fighter jet released flares close to an Australian P-8A surveillance plane over the South China Sea.
Both Australia and New Zealand have another worry, that China may be strengthening its ability to deploy its forces in the region by cosying up to South Pacific microstates. In February the Cook Islands agreed to form a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China and announced plans for Chinese investment, including port-building.
New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, said his country was “blindsided”. It has close ties with the Cook Islands, including an arrangement to co-ordinate their security and foreign policies. Mihai Sora of the Lowy Institute, a think-tank in Sydney, says China has reason to be drawn to the Cook Islands (population: 16,800). It could, he says, become a good spot to refuel and resupply task forces—like the one sailing around Australia.
A new film is breaking box-office records in China
Film-makers in China have long tried to find the secret sauce for movies that wow audiences while pleasing the Communist Party. The epics that evolved became known as zhuxuanlu(主旋律), or “main melody” films, because they are in tune with the party line. But the heavy doses of patriotism that they usually involve have fallen out of favour. Instead, one Beijing studio has struck gold with a cartoon reimagining the tale of a “demon child” from a 16th-century novel.
The film, “Ne Zha 2”, is a sequel, in which the eponymous child battles monsters and immortals on a quest to save his friend and protect his family’s fortress. Launched over the Chinese New Year holiday, it has taken more than $2bn and become the most successful animated feature ever made anywhere. It has overtaken “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as the seventhhighest-grossing film ever. And it has done so by tapping deep into China’s cultural roots.
By the mid-2010s, film-makers were nailing the main melody of the patriotic blockbuster. Before “Ne Zha 2”, the two most popular films were “The Battle at Lake Changjin” from 2021 and “Wolf Warrior 2” from 2017. Both were action flicks involving the defeat of dastardly foreigners. Such films topped China’s charts from 2017 to 2023 (except 2019), according to data from Maoyan, a movie-ticketing service. The state invested in their rise. A law passed in 2016 to support the film industry listed “promoting core socialist values” as one key theme. But their popularity peaked in 2020, when they accounted for more than half of box-office receipts of the 20 highest-grossing films. This year, that share fell below 2%. Triumphant narratives of national strength seem detached from reality, with Chinese viewers now struggling in a depressed economy.
Enter the demon child. “Ne Zha 2” has perhaps caught on because it is not forcing anything on anyone. Chinese people know the character from folklore. The film is packed with humour delivered by endearing characters, and it resonates because of its messages of self-determination, the unconditional love of family and the pursuit of justice. The technical sophistication has amazed viewers and pitched domestic animation studios as serious competitors to their Hollywood counterparts.
At a cinema in the eastern city of Hangzhou Ms Zheng, a 20-year-old student, is watching the film with her friends. She says she found the hero epics too heavy—“They force-feed patriotism”—and has already seen “Ne Zha 2” three times. Like many young people disillusioned by the current paucity of job opportunities, Ms Zheng says she finds hope in the rebellious and righteous Ne Zha. “Nowadays we are overwhelmed by social pressure, but he tells you that you can define the type of person you want to be.”
To boost consumption during the holiday, local governments gave out cinema vouchers to attract more moviegoers. Once it was clear the film could break records, more people rallied to see it. Schools took students, and firms stopped production so employees could attend. One cinema in Sichuan province said that it would hold off screening the recently released “Captain America: Brave New World” in order to boost “Ne Zha 2” sales. “Our Chinese animation deserves to be seen by the world,” it said.
The world has not yet been won over, though. So far, less than 2% of ticket sales have come from abroad. That could be the next melody Chinese filmmakers learn to play.