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“Lie Flat”– Chinese Youth Subculture in the Context

of the Pandemic and National Rejuvenation

Wendy Su

To cite this article: Wendy Su (2023): “Lie Flat”– Chinese Youth Subculture in the Context of the
Pandemic and National Rejuvenation, Continuum, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2023.2190059

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Published online: 15 Mar 2023.

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CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2023.2190059

“Lie Flat”– Chinese Youth Subculture in the Context of the

Pandemic and National Rejuvenation
Wendy Su
Department of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Between April and July 2021, a buzzword and the associated trendy Received 6 September 2021
lifestyle surfaced in mainland China amidst the ruling Party’s Accepted 7 March 2023
month-long extravagant celebration of its 100th anniversary. This KEYWORDS
buzzword and the associated lifestyle quickly became a ‘doctrine- Youth Culture; China; Lie flat;
ism’ that was particularly phenomenal amidst the overwhelming Resistance; Uncollaboration
official discourse of patriotism and national rejuvenation. This buzz­
word is ‘lie Flat’ (tangping), and the associated doctrine-ism is ‘lying
flat-ism’. Drawing on social media posts and focus group discussion,
this article considers ‘lying flat-ism’ a youth subculture in contem­
porary China. It seeks to explore this subcultural phenomenon and
traces the social, educational, and economic reasons behind the
emergence of this subculture. Agreeing with the claim that this
youth culture, along with ‘diaosi’ and ‘sang’ subcultures, reflects the
‘collective frustration’ of Chinese youth, the article further argues
that ‘lying flat-ism’ is Chinese youth’s non-violent uncooperative
rebellion, modern cynicism and negotiation with official doctrines.
It is a spontaneous resistance to social inequality, and a collective
and desperate yearning for social change.

Introduction
Between April and July 2021, a buzzword and the associated trendy lifestyle surfaced in
mainland China amidst the ruling Party’s month-long extravagant celebration of its 100th
anniversary. This buzzword and the associated lifestyle quickly became a ‘doctrine-ism’
that was particularly phenomenal and indifferent to the overwhelming official discourse
of patriotism and national rejuvenation. This buzzword is ‘lie Flat’ (tangping), and the
associated doctrine-ism is ‘lying flat-ism’; both continue triggering waves of heated
debates nationwide. The buzzword originates from a post in ‘Baidu Tieba’ published by
the username ‘Kind-hearted Traveller’. The post, noticeably titled ‘To Lie Flat is Justice’,
reads as below:
I have not worked for two years, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with it . . . the
omnipresent pressures come from peers who search for their positions when comparing with
others’ socioeconomic statuses and the elders’ traditional norms, and the news is also about
celebrities’ love and pregnancy stories, as if some ‘invisible creatures’ try to create a way of
thinking and to impose on you. But Man does not have to act in a certain way. I can behave
like Diogenes basking in the sunset in a pithos, or like Heraclitus living in a cave to think over

CONTACT Wendy Su wendysu@ucr.edu Wendy Su 3134 INTS, 900 University Ave. Riverside, 92521, California
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 W. SU

‘Logos.’ Since there never truly exists a trend of thought that honors human subjectivity in
this land, I can then create for myself: to lie flat is exactly my wisdom, only through lying flat,
Man is the measure of all things (Huang 2021).

This ‘kind-hearted traveller’ further shared that he did not have a permanent job for 2
years, had two meals a day and only spent 200 yuan a month. He would go swimming,
fishing, and exercising in his leisure time. He chose a lifestyle of slow pace, few desires,
and being truly oneself to confront society. He then proudly declared ‘To choose to lie flat
and no longer live in fear!’
His post soon went viral, and to ‘lie flat’ became a neologism among younger genera­
tions which also caused grave concerns for the authority. The original post was quickly
deleted, but ‘lying flat-ism’ has become a household term and metaphor all over the
country since then.
The original post has profound implications for contemporary Chinese youth’s
search for autonomous subjectivity, freedom, and human dignity. The reference of
Diogenes and Heraclitus also indicates their yearning for a way of life resembling
ancient Greek philosophers’ cynicism to some extent. The title ‘To Lie Flat is Justice’, in
particular, suggests that the act of lying flat is a moral choice and even autonomy,
albeit negative, from being exploited labour in a highly competitive and stressful
Chinese society. Based on Wikipedia’s explanation, ‘lying flat’ or ‘lying flat-ism’ refers
to Chinese youth’s behavioural attitude of no desire and no demand out of disap­
pointment to reality amidst a slowdown economy and intensified social problems. It is
a resistance to ‘involution’ or the rat race resulting from meaningless domestic hyper-
competition. It includes some behavioural norms such as no purchase of a house, no
purchase of a car, no marriage, no children, and no consumption, as well as the
maintenance of the lowest living standard and the refusal of being an exploited
money-making machine and slave (Wikipedia).
In fact, ‘lying-flat-ism’ is a continuation or even culmination of previous youth sub­
cultures of ‘diaosi’, ‘sang’ and foxi qingnian, the Buddhist youth, which I shall revisit in the
following sections.
This article considers ‘lying flat-ism’ a youth subculture in contemporary China. It seeks
to explore this subcultural phenomenon and traces the social, educational, and economic
reasons behind the rise of this subculture. Agreeing with the claim that this youth culture,
along with ‘diaosi’ and ‘sang’ subcultures, reflects the ‘collective frustration’ of Chinese
youth (Peng 2021, June 25-27), the article further argues that ‘lying flat-ism’ is Chinese
youth’s non-violent uncooperative rebellion, modern cynicism and negotiation with
official doctrines. It is a spontaneous resistance to social inequality, and a collective and
desperate yearning for social change.
Methodologically, the first part of the research draws on posts and discussions
launched by a Douban forum, ‘The Mutual-Assistance Alliance of Standing Up after
Lying Flat’ (https://www.douban.com/group/726097/), the solely existing online group
with 6840 members after similar ‘lying flat’ groups are all purged by the state. In the
second part of the research, short videos regarding lying flat-ism are collected and
analysed from Bilibili, a famous youth subculture website. Talks from two focus groups
composed of seven college students and four college graduates, respectively, were
further cited to advance the analysis. I situate the discussion in the theoretical framework
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 3

of youth subculture and take reference from British Cultural Studies tradition and
European youth studies scholarship.

Youth culture – a theoretical framework

Youth studies has a long history in Western countries. Developed initially in post-World
War II British and European societies and evolved from a sociological tradition, youth
studies has two different, yet, parallel lines of interest, what Australian sociologists Dan
Woodman and Andy Bennett termed ‘two dominant poles’ (Woodman and Bennett 2015,
1). One is the so-called ‘transitions’ or ‘transitional’ tradition that focuses on youth
transitions to ‘adulthood’ and their entry into labour market after the completion of
school study. The other is the so-called ‘cultures’ or ‘cultural’ tradition that is initiated
and heavily influenced by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(CCCS) (Woodman and Bennett 2015; Furlong 2013, 5), highlighting youth cultural expres­
sion and the meaning of their experiences. The latter is also related to the ‘subculture’
study tradition that explores youth-subcultural groups in the 1960s and 1970s as resis­
tance to dominant capitalist social order (Hall 1976; Cohen 1972; Hebdige 1979).
Entering the 21st century, the old subcultural approach to youth culture has been
subject to acute criticisms. Those criticisms include the subcultural approach’s overem­
phasis on class struggle, group identity, and political resistance in the negligence of race,
gender and sexuality, the exclusive focus on white Western males to the neglect of young
females and other ethnic groups, the lack of empirical evidence and the overgeneraliza­
tion of findings to local cultures, the neglect of the role of cultural industries, and the
excessive attention paid to deviant, extraordinary, and peculiar groups to the neglect of
everyday practices of ordinary youth (Dhoest et al. 2015; Cote 2014, 150–151). The
criticisms lead to a so-called ‘post-subcultural’ line of thinking, which either calls for a
‘holistic approach to youth lives’ (Woodman and Bennett 2015, 5), or the reinterpretation
and redefinition of subculture concerning everyday practices of cultural production and
consumption in ‘today’s hybrid and globalized media landscape’ (Dhoest et al. 2015, 1).

The uniqueness of PRC youth culture

Conventional youth studies are primarily based on experiences and cultural expres­
sions of Western European white, working-class males, and its relevance to post­
socialist mainland Chinese youth is dubious. A more direct reference is perhaps
youth experiences in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries that
once shared the same political ideology, similar political structures, and social
systems with China. The most recent and perhaps the only available monograph in
this regard is Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context (Schwartz & Winkel
2016). The authors found that Eastern European youth has to cope with ‘a double
transformation: their personal puberty paralleled with the political transitions experi­
enced by post-socialist societies, which have no historical precedent, from state-
communism into (nominally) democratic members of the global market economy’
(7). In addition, youth in Soviet culture, the authors discover, is more ‘an ideological
concept symbolizing vigour, power, vitality and future than a biological and socio­
logical transition phase’ (6). Youth in Eastern European countries demonstrate
4 W. SU

conformist patterns and loyalty to their respective governments, rather than rebel­
lious, anti-mainstream attitudes fundamentally different from their parents’
generation.
Mainland Chinese youth’s experience is fundamentally distant from Western European
youth experiences, and strikingly different from Eastern European youth experiences as
well. While Eastern European youth has experienced the total collapse of communist
systems and radical yet abrupt transitions to nominally liberal democracies and market
economy, mainland Chinese youth has experienced a disjuncture in China’s transforma­
tion, a transformation to a so-called socialist market economy, yet within an untouched
authoritarian political structure. While Chinese youth do share two similarities of globa­
lization and digitalization with their Western and Eastern European counterparts, the
imprints of this disjuncture left in their lives and how they manage to negotiate through
this disjuncture merit more in-depth exploration.
Profound changes in the beliefs and values of Chinese youth after Mao’s era are
discovered from the 1980s and the 1990s to the 2010s. Chinese youth’s collectivist
value systems of Confucianism and communism had shifted to the Western individual-
oriented value system by 1988 (Luo 1995, 2002). During the entire 1980s, various internal
and external forces both shaped and inspired China’s youth movements directly leading
to the 1989 pro-democracy movement. In the 1990s, China’s college students shunned
away from political idealism and activism of the previous generation and were more
indulged in consumer culture and individual interests (Luo 2004). In the first decade of the
21st century, Chinese youth was found to be ‘far from unified in their belief system or
behaviours’, and displayed a variety of tendencies of being both ‘internationalist’ and
‘nationalist’, both ‘pragmatic’ and ‘materialistic’ (Rosen 2009, 360–361).
However, since the mid-1990s, a remarkable trend in youth culture – a strong nation­
alist sentiment – has been rapidly growing due to several factors including the govern­
ment’s expanded patriotic education, the youth’s perceived Western hostility towards
China in a number of events involving the NATO’s bombing Chinese embassy in Belgrade,
the occupation of the Diaoyu Island by Japan, and the disturbances in the Olympic torch
relay before Beijing’s host of 2008 Olympic Games. Chinese youth began to reflect on the
previous generation’s uncritical embrace of the Western liberal democracy model and
increasingly feel pride in China’s ascending status on the world stage (Liu 2012). In the Xi
Jinping era, with their enthusiastic support of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation,
youth popular nationalism has become a dominant trend ever. As Zhao Suisheng ana­
lysed: ‘youth in Xi’s China are more fiercely patriotic and loyal to the party-state than older
generations. Chinese youth have grown up witnessing a remarkable rise of living stan­
dards and rapid modernization with no memory of the Great Leap Forward, Tiananmen
Square, or anything other than steady growth and increasing opportunity under the
party-state’ (Zhao 2021, 150). This trend culminated by the 100th anniversary of the CCP
following a series of patriotic education campaigns glorifying the Party’s victory in
combating the COVID-19 pandemic and in leading China to progress into a richer and
mighty world power.
However, with the increasingly tight control of the Party and worsening socio-eco­
nomic conditions before and after the pandemic, Chinese youth culture becomes strik­
ingly polarized. ‘Little Pinks’ with hyper-nationalism some appear to be, increasingly
cynical and satirical others turn out to be. The nonmainstream subcultures mirror satirical
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 5

and playful life attitudes and resistance even rebellion against official discourses, such as
the E’ gao and Shanzhai cultures, the Diaosi, sang cultures, and Buddhist youth.
In studying the E’gao culture from Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse, scholars have
argued that it is an alternative political discourse that reflects popular discontent and
grievances (Meng 2011), an online practice of political satire (Yang, Tang, and Wang 2015),
a networked digital leisure practice and a rich repertoire of satire, humour, and parody
resulting from Chinese post-socialist politics (Haiqing 2015; Haiqing and Jian 2017). By the
same token, the Shanzhai culture is viewed as creative and participatory grassroot
Internet production that attempted to resist the power – money hegemony of CCTV
(Jian 2016). Although researchers admit that the E’gao and Shanzhai cultures may not live
up to the public sphere ideal of rational deliberation, unable to challenge the neoliberal
logic of Chinese media and the establishment cultures (Meng 2011; Haiqing and Jian
2017), and may only serve as ‘symbolic power’ (Tang and Yang 2011), they nevertheless
acknowledge the political significance of these subcultures in countering official hege­
mony, creating open space and triggering serious political debates.
The subcultures represented by Diaosi, Sang and Buddhist youth, the precedents of the
lying-flat culture tend to be dark in style, negative in life attitude, and more scepticism
and cynicism in value systems. ‘Diaosi’ and ‘Sang’ refer to a mental state of loss, depriva­
tion, or even death prevailing in the 2010s, which points to a ‘youth culture of self-
mockery and self-defeat’ in dreadful social stratifications (Peng 2021, June 25-27), and a
sense of disenchantment and disconsolation in the context of officially sanctioned
‘positive energy’ and the China Dream (Tan and Cheng 2020). In studying the diaosi
phenomenon on China’s Internet, Yang, Tang, and Wang (2015) drew on James Scott’s
idea and conceptualized this subculture as ‘infrapolitics’ that used the Internet as an
emerging public sphere to grow an online culture of collective identity-making that defies
hypernormalization and seeks solidarity and cultural intimacy. The phenomenon of lying
flat is also closely related to one of the top buzzwords of 2018, foxi qingnian or ‘Buddhist
Youth’. The term originally emerged in Japanese media in 2014 to describe a specific type
of ‘Buddhist men’ who are self-indulgent in their own hobbies without much interaction
with others. In the Chinese context, Buddhist youth refers to young people who seek to
escape everyday pressure and pursue a peaceful lifestyle in a fast-paced society without
much to do with Buddhist traditions (Koetse 2022b, 25 May).

Lie flat – youth anxiety and frustration in the context of ‘involution’

Lying-flatism represents the latest pattern of Chinese youth’s negotiation with official
norms and social constraints. It displays an active non-conformity and non-cooperation
gesture but is disguised in a seemingly negative and non-confrontational style.
The Douban forum, ‘The Mutual-Assistance Alliance of Standing Up after Lying Flat’,
(https://www.douban.com/group/726097/) is the sole existing online group with 6840
active members after similar ‘lying flat’ groups were all purged by the state. I believe the
state tolerance of the group is due to its emphasis on ‘standing up’ rather than ‘lying flat’,
a more positive attitude approved by the state. In the declaration of the group’s establish­
ment, the founder Jenny 鲸 believed that ‘to lie flat is a choice and everybody has their
own reasons. In this era when ‘involution’ is omnipresent, to lie flat is immensely appeal­
ing and is indeed a way of resisting involution’ (Jenny, 13 May 2021. https://www.douban.
6 W. SU

com/group/726097/). Jenny said ‘I want to build a small family community, welcome

those who have found themselves losing the courage of standing up after lying flat, and
miss themselves once brave and strong, just like me!’ She called groups members to share
their ‘rehabilitation diaries’ and experiences of regaining courage. Although the group
emphasizes ‘standing up’, we can trace major social problems behind their attitude of
lying flat-ism from their personal stories of frustration, loss, and depression. A total of 327
threads and 1637 follow-up posts from 13 May to 13 July 2021 are collected. They are
categorized into different groups based on their themes of job loss and seeking, graduate
school application and studying abroad, mental health rehabilitation and the effort of
‘standing up’, as well as family backgrounds and stories. Then, representative posts from
each group are decoded with the main themes extracted and the shocking reality facing
this community and the Chinese society at large discovered.
The unique context in which lying flat-ism surfaced is the ‘involution’, or the rat race – a
key term defining post-pandemic China.
Involution (neijuanhua) is used in the China context in comparison with ‘Revolution’
and ‘evolution’. ‘Involution’ refers to a regressive tendency of China’s entire system and
the intensified malicious competition occurring at every level of society. The word was
first applied to social sciences by a Chinese-American historian studying north China
agriculture. The historian argued that the traditional Chinese way of farming lacked
innovation, leading to low productivity and malicious competition for meagre land and
water resources. Although farmers increasingly put their labour into production, agricul­
ture plunged into a crisis due to the lack of technological innovation and social transfor­
mation. As such, ‘Involution’ especially indicates a state in which society does not progress
into a more efficient, humane, and advanced stage even with the tremendous investment
of labour, resources, and effort, but regresses into a state featuring more malicious
competition and social conflicts. In China, ‘Involution’ typically manifests itself in the
sector of education due to highly selective college entrance exams and even entrance
exams from elite kindergartens to high schools, extending to all walks of life (Yang 2021).
Involution further intensifies in a post-pandemic international context and China’s
increasingly isolated status in the international community. Because of the prolonged
US–China trade war, the US-led allied Western political and economic sanctions on China
due to their clashes on the origin of the pandemic, the issues of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
Xinjiang, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed an ‘internal circulation’ strategy- the
domestic cycle of production, distribution, and consumption – to reduce China’s depen­
dence on overseas markets and technology in its long-term development. This strategy is
a remarkable shift from Deng Xiaoping’s ‘great international circulation’ strategy adopted
three decades ago and a continuing adjustment of China’s export-led economic model
after the 2008–09 global financial crisis. The strategy was later modified to become ‘dual
circulation’, meaning ‘internal circulation’ should be supported by ‘external circulation’.
The ‘dual circulation’ strategy will be a key priority in the government’s 14th five-year plan
(2021–2025) (Yao 2020).
The ‘internal circulation’ strategy, the slow-down economy, and the shrinking job
market further escalate the rat race within China. To make the situation even worse, the
never-ending sky-rocketing housing prices and the ‘middle-income’ trap China is experi­
encing further aggravate the social environment in which youth pessimism and frustra­
tion grow. The immense pressure from heavy college coursework and fierce graduate
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 7

school admission competition makes younger generations constantly live in anxiety. The
anxiety further extends to the uncertainty in the job market and the insecurity of income,
and turns into a fear for the future, a sense of futile effort and the pointless meaning of life,
and eventually an attitude of lying flat. The founder of the group Jenney 鲸 admitted that
one of the reasons for her ‘lying flat’ was a sense of worthless effort and unhappiness in
every stage of life from high school to graduate school, and her desperate escapism from
reality (https://www.douban.com/group/topic/226438396/, Jenny鲸).
Other forum participants shared their stories of conflicts with academic advisors,
uninteresting but cannot-be-changed majors, failed attempts to be nominated for grad­
uate schools and lost opportunities for better jobs. Uncertainty and insecurity about the
job market further extend the anxiety into after-school adult life, reinforcing the youth’s
depression, loss, and bewilderment. One member wrote, ‘I am fired again, desperately
hope to lie flat!’ (Mengzhu, 30 May. https://www.douban.com/group/topic/228405316).
Another member wrote, ‘I have worked for one year after graduation and feel to work is
mere to make a living. Society is so harsh and I have no idea what is best for me’. And
sighed, ‘I am so anxious and confused!’ (LuckyYue, 14 June 2021. https://www.douban.
com/group/topic/230672286).
The deep-rooted social problems behind youth anxiety are detailed in a long post by
‘Schoolmate Xiaowang’. Self claiming oneself as ‘a loser’ suffering from cruel capital
exploitation and social torture, Xiaowang wrote (s)he ‘had no sense of security but
wandered around as if abandoned by the whole world’. (S)he traced his(her) humble
birth family background that is completely unable to help with paying for overpriced
housing and to provide any social network for (her)him to get decent jobs and get
promoted. ‘The great gap between us exists ever since we are born’, wrote Xiaowang,
‘someone’s starting point is the ending height that you never dream of achieving’. (S)he
further wrote:

I don’t have a wealthy father and a prestigious family background. I must clearly realize that I
must entirely rely on myself to earn everything. I am not positioned to lie down, I must move
forward. In this ‘involution’ era where top-notch college graduates are everywhere, and only
graduates have a competitive edge, I am merely a graduate from a non-elite college. In the
context where only Internet e-finance can earn a high wage, a major in environmental
engineering like me has no ‘money future’.

The 996 working schedule (work from 9 am to 9 pm for six days a week) makes one
exhausted, malicious competition and scheme within companies makes one disgusted, and
intensified involution makes one helpless and hopeless. We can only learn to adapt to reality
and change what we can change. Bear hope and move on . . . (17 June. https://www.douban.
com/group/topic/231019605.)

Another forum participant, ‘Maiqingyuan’, listed the reasons for quitting his(her) job: low
salary and bad welfare, busy, demanding yet monotonous working schedule, endless
extra work shifts during weekends that constantly last for more than one year, very few
chances for being promoted, and malicious office culture (Maiqingyuan, 23 June 2021.
https://www.douban.com/group/topic/232053694/).
These posts reveal deep-rooted social problems in Chinese society: the limitation
of upward mobility because of family background and social networks, the impact
of social inequality and hierarchy on youth's sense of unfairness and insecurity.
8 W. SU

Moreover, the decades-long rapid transition to a market economy has created a

ruthless capital-labour relation that takes a toll on youth mentality. These problems
are further worsened by the COVID-19 global pandemic and the rapidly deteriorat­
ing international environment. Accordingly, the significantly reduced studying
abroad opportunities amidst the pandemic and the severe US–China relation, in
particular, have brought about more anxiety and hardship for the Chinese youth.
Consequently, some youth openly select lying flat-ism to express their despair and
frustration.
The pandemic interrupted some members’ entire study and career plans, and their
lives have been ruined. One top-notch college student mentioned that the pandemic
ruined all his (her) plan for taking GRE and studying abroad due to the lockdown and
the financial hardship endured by his (her) family (Zhouxing, 30 May. https://www.
douban.com/group/topic/228439111). Another student detailed all her defeats over
three years: her nomination for graduate school was eventually replaced in 2019 by
another student with better family ties, and her admission to the Hong Kong
University voluntarily gave up due to the riot in Hong Kong in 2020. Her visa to
study in the U.S. was denied under the Trump administration. All her dreams of
studying abroad for a better experience were shattered, and she can only accept an
unsatisfactory job to kill time. ‘For the entire year’, wrote her, ‘I dawdled in the office,
played games or watched TV till dawn after work, swallowed fast foods. I self-isolated
cutting off all connections. Move between the office and my dormitory, apathetic and
empty’ (Amber, 8 June. https://www.douban.com/group/topic/229717148). The third
student wrote:

I graduated from a foreign university in 2020, gave up the pursuit of PhD to search for a job,
and lost the job offer because of the pandemic . . . Finally, I went back to China in November
and lay down due to bad spiritual and physical conditions. So far, eight months have passed,
my life is like collapsing Dominoes, one falls after another . . . .I tried to pick up myself, but the
path is hard and long (KantLaplacenebular, 20 June. https://www.douban.com/group/topic/
231466720).

Frustrated Chinese youth desperately long for freedom, security, and happiness, and use
lying flat-ism as a way of anti-involution and anti-consumerism. One forum member
admitted that she rediscovered happiness ever since she quit her overstretched and
exhausting job at ByteDance. She wrote, ‘No high pressure, no overworking schedule,
no complicated interpersonal relations, no meaningless extra work hours; this is life!’ She
shared that the most important is that she again has time to think. Thinking over the
recent hot topic of lying flat-ism, she realized it is ‘a refusal to the senseless rat race and
internal frictions, a bypass of the trap of consumerism, a sense of relief due to a simpler
lifestyle and low desires, and an unprecedented, pleasant experience’. However, she also
admitted that her husband continued the 996 working schedule to support the family so
that she can relax and lie flat (Haichang yu feng, 31 May 2021. https://www.douban.com/
group/topic/228509219).
The central theme of this Douban group is more about youth pressure, anxiety, and
negative life attitudes. Other social media and focus group discussions, however, probed
into more profound societal problems behind lying-flatism and revealed more rebellious
opinions among young people.
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 9

Lie flat – youth nonviolent uncollaborative resistance

Drawing on social media posts of Bilibili, a youth subculture platform featuring innovative
ACG cultural products, as well as two focus group discussions, this section further
unearths the perplexing social and educational constraints behind lying-flat-ism, traces
the response of the state and official media, thus deconstructing the very nature of lying-
flat-ism.
Typing ‘lie flat’ as a key search word on the website of Bilibili can yield nearly 1000
videos. We screened out those videos that advertised games, animations, and dramas,
criticized the lying flat attitude of the U.S. and Japan in battling against Covid, and those
videos that merely used the term to make fun and were irrelevant to the topic of this
research. We finally selected roughly a dozen of videos for their in-depth examination of
deep-rooted social and economic power relations in social stratification, housing price,
capital exploitation and social disparity, which precisely account for the prevailing atti­
tude of lying flat among Chinese youth.
One video blogger compared the living standard between elite college graduates from
the lower class and second-or third-tier college graduates from the upper class and with
solid family financial support, arguing that even graduated from elite colleges, they will
never be able to afford to purchase any house in big cities. Their wealth will never be able
to catch up with their less-talented peers with better family backgrounds, leading to those
elite graduates’ feeling of useless effort and a lying flat attitude instead. Those with better
family ties possess better resources including money, and ‘good location-houses’ in good
neighbourhoods with good schools, and their kids will be relatively easy to move up
along the social hierarchy. Those without any family support, no matter how talented and
how hard they struggle, will either be unable to afford any housing or be in lifetime debt.
The blogger concluded that social stratification had been consolidated in contemporary
China without much upward mobility for the youth. This video blog acquired nearly 500,
000 relays and nearly 700 bullet-screen comments (4 May 2021 05:30:15 (https://www.
bilibili.com/video/BV14B4y1c778?from=search&seid=3154949947874397560).
Another video blogger provides an even more thoughtful probe into the intertwined
relations among social stratification, capital accumulation, the rich-poor disparity, and the
ensuring consequence on society’s social and economic development. He maintained
that college graduates consciously choose to go back to their small hometowns to ‘lie
flat’, meaning to pursue a less stressful lifestyle. The reasons include the following: First,
the increasingly unbearable pressure from fierce school and career competition, endless
job demands, and the 996 working schedule. The pressure to purchase a house and a car
in order to secure a marriage further intensifies the fear and anxiety of the youth, leading
to their hopelessly endless struggle. Second, the growing gap between the rich and the
poor has further deepened social conflicts. The privileged possess huge resources and
capital, lift and maintain high housing prices to secure huge profits. To acquire money to
provide social welfare and salary, the governments at various levels also hope to sell lands
at higher prices, leading to the money-power alliance, skyrocketing housing prices, and
even wider social disparity. Third, the difficulty in upward mobility and the consolidation
of social stratifications lead to the prevailing frustration among the youth and a sense of
pointless struggle, resulting in a rather lying flat attitude within their own social class.
Fourth, consequently, the youth attitude of voluntarily lying flat will eventually lead to
10 W. SU

fewer available quality labourers and lower productivity, low consumption level, shrunk
industrial economy, and expanded speculative investment. At last, the three backbones of
China’s economy, investment, consumption and export, will be all negatively impacted
(11 June 2021. https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Uw411Z7Q3?from=search&seid=
3128933173989652625).
Under such circumstances, some also argued that lying flat is a short-term mood
release by Chinese youth in a highly stressful environment, a strategy in a highly compe­
titive job market, and a performance art to resist an unhealthy lifestyle. Lying flat-ism
acknowledges another way of life – a relaxing and non-competitive lifestyle (24 June
2021. https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1e64y1t74a?from=search&seid=
5552711277624232453).
However, the more fundamental and radical nature of lying flat-ism is shockingly
declared by focus group discussions, and reasserted by open announcements of several
video bloggers on Bilibili before they were deleted. The two focus groups were organized
during my sabbatical in China for exploring youth culture and not for investigating lying-
flatism per se, but the discussion nevertheless provided valuable first-hand information
about the phenomenon. In one focus group discussion at a university, when I asked
college student participants what ‘lying-flatism’ meant to them, all seven participants
answered loudly, unanimously, and simultaneously without any hesitation: ‘non-violent
resistance!’ (25 October 2021 focus group). One participant further explained:

Lying flat is our rebellion against the capital, the state system, and politics. We don’t want to
be chives to be mown down. If we lie flat, they have no way to exploit us! (Participant #1).

These participants generally agreed with the Douban group’s descriptions of youth living
conditions and mentality, and shared the sentiment of frustration and depression.
Another participant commented:

We are elite college students and are in a better position than those lying flat, but we still feel
confused and helpless in this ruthlessly competitive society. Where are we heading?
(Participant #3).

In another focus group of college graduates, participants said they fully understand and
respect those who want to lie flat, ‘if they have better choices, who want to lie flat?’ said
one participant. But they were pretty sceptical about lying-flatism. One participant said:

We understand those who want to lie flat. But those people are kind of showy. If we don’t
work, we will go hungry. We cannot afford to lie flat. (Participant #6).

As such, lying-flatism is a matter of how much self-control one wants to claim or is capable
of claiming through lying flat. Lying flat may be merely a posed gesture through which
Chinese youth showcase their attitude towards life and individual autonomy. Lying-
flatism may only have symbolic power. But the symbolic power is no less powerful. In
discussion and in videos, youth openly and explicitly declared that ‘lying flat is our non-
violent, uncooperative grassroots movement’, ‘lying flat-ism is our reject of involution and
refusal to be exploited by capital’. ‘lying flat is our non-violent resistance!’ These declara­
tions resonate with the founder of lying flat-ism’s claim that ‘to lie flat is justice’. It is a
morally conscious volunteer choice of Chinese youth to resist exploitation in a high state
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 11

capitalism stage, a search for more freedom and autonomous subjectivity, and a yearning
for a more meaningful life.
As analysed above and to dig deeper, we can see that the attitude of lying flat reflects
the deep-rooted social problems of the Chinese society, a catharsis of Chinese youth
imposed tremendous social pressure and facing unsolvable social contradictions. It is a
positive resistance in a negative style. As an alarming sign, this attitude has posed a
significant threat to China’s social fabric and naturally caused grave concerns for the state.
At least four Douban forum groups titled ‘lying flat’ were quickly shut down by order of
the state. State media Nanfang Daily bombarded lying flat-ism as ‘shameless without any
sense of justice!’ Hubei Provincial Television Station’s Channel of Economy also published
an editorial stating that ‘you can resign yourself to destiny, but you are not allowed to lie
flat!’ A professor from the prestigious Qinghua University criticized lying flat-ism as
‘irresponsible behaviour that fails to live up to the expectations of both parents and
taxpayers’. The Weibo account of the Chinese Communist Youth League also called for
young people not to let down the country and shoulder their historical mission (Huang
2021).
Even so, young people defend themselves by arguing that to lie flat does not violate
any laws and regulations, and they are entitled to their own choice of life. They choose to
lie flat not because they are lazy but because what they earn cannot match what they
invest. They do not want to be slaves exploited endlessly. They want to lie flat with dignity
but not kneel down without any dignity. For them, to lie flat indeed means justice.

Conclusion
This article surveys the latest Chinese youth subculture, ‘lying flat-ism’, based on social
media communication and focus group discussions. The article attributes the youth
attitude of lying flat to the intensely growing anxiety and pressure resulting from the
increasingly polarized Chinese society and widening rich-poor disparity, economic stag­
nation, ruthless job market competition and the lost opportunity for upward mobility.
Lying flat-ism reveals the deep-rooted social problems in Chinese society and sends an
alarming signal of youth rebellion to the state. Lying flat-ism is the youth’s morally
conscious resistance to capitalist exploitation and search for autonomous subjectivity
and more meaningful life.
Lying flat-ism, by its nature, is a non-violent uncooperative spontaneous declaration of
a way of life, rather than an organized and coherent grassroots movement. The inter­
pretation of lying flat-ism is also varied and individualistic, which is an indication of
Chinese young people’s criticism of social injustice imposed on young people, and an
ongoing process of negotiation with the forces of state and the market for self-autonomy
which can afford space for their pursuit of diversified personal values and meaning of life.
This youth-subcultural phenomenon is certainly nonconformist to the official ideology
and doctrine, but falls short of a radical movement and a revolutionary spirit. By its nature,
lying flat-ism is passive, negative, and escapist, rather than optimist, positive, and
confrontational.
However, unexpected human tragedies that happened since the Shanghai lockdown
of March 2022 further disillusioned the Chinese youth and pushed them towards the
more despair and radical end of mentality. If we can say the Shanghai lockdown marks a
12 W. SU

turning point in China’s popular consciousness, a profound shift in public opinions and
the youth belief system, then the Urumqi Fire of 24 November 2022 that killed at least 10
people and triggered nationwide protests symbolizes a radical departure from passive
and escapist lying-flatism. On 27 November 2022, students from a total of 53 universities
went on streets launching a so-called ‘blanket white paper protest’ in which young people
held up white A4 papers to protest against censorship and stringent measures (Koetse
2022a). One noticeable central theme of those protests is ‘Freedom’. The famous declara­
tion of ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ by Patrick Henry, one of America's founding
fathers, is the most quoted slogan shouted by people and featured in many posters at a
number of universities including Peking University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University,
Shanghai Theater Academy, Northeaster Agricultural University, The Central Academy of
Drama, etc. (https://twitter.com/whyyoutouzhele). If previous studies believed contem­
porary Chinese youth culture is ‘nonconfrontational’, ‘noncontentious’ (Wang 2019), is not
driven by Western ideas and does not suggest any political and radical tendency, latest
developments in the youth movement may invite a reconsideration of this argument. This
radical change in Chinese youth culture should be the topic of another research. Suffice
here to say that rapidly worsening Chinese circumstances even make lying flat unafford­
able and impossible. Lying flat-ism may be a temporary release and relaxation, an escapist
retreat, or silent resistance. It may well be a transition to the next stage of the youth
movement.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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