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2min chapter
Is the West Getting China Wrong? with Keyu Jin and Gideon Rachman
Intelligence Squared
The Importance of Hope in China
There's a new phenomenon called lying flat, basically giving up. The Chinese leaders don't think that this is something that should be encouraged. Lying flat is not about being utterly disgruntled and giving up per se. It's also come to characterize part of the new generation that is more relaxed. That's less ambitious. That is less hungry. So we want to think about China's new generation as having a better lifestyle,. life consumption balance, and work life balance. They're not going to compete and race for the bottom. And that's, that kind of job is going to be passed on to other countries.
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Speaker 2
There's an interesting, again, anecdote in the book where you say that there was a cigarette making plant where the people assembling the cigarettes were all graduates and some of them post graduates on that line.
Speaker 1
Top masters and college students, uh, in cigarette factories, nannies, uh, that have master degrees from Columbia. These are all things that have caused, uh, a social uproar. You got to ask, you know, the Chinese families, what is it all about? Their hope, right? It's all about the next generation. For a long period of time, the bottom run of society was happy and content because they knew that their children could have a better future. That's what sustained, that was a bedrock to social stability. Today, it's a completely different issue with reduced expectations that even if you pour and about 25% of household, uh, expenditure are devoted to educating one child, if you are investing that much resources, and then your kid doesn't get a good job, then what, what is your hope? What are you, what are you, how are you going to look into the future? And the kid itself must feel horribly demoralized because all
Speaker 2
the family's hopes are poured into them and then perhaps
Speaker 1
through no fault of your own, you haven't delivered. There's a new phenomenon called lying flat, basically giving up. Uh, now that's become a focal point for the Chinese leaders. They don't think that this is something that should be encouraged, but you know, I want to take a different perspective on this. Lying flat is not about being utterly disgruntled and giving up per se. It's also, uh, come to characterize part of the new generation that is more relaxed. That's less ambitious. That is less hungry. Now don't forget that when China joined the WTO, one of the core reasons why that was in 2001, when it was, when it was so successful was not because of the subsidies, but because there was a large swath of really productive and super hard working labor, labor force where the Fox con, uh, workers opted for three shifts a night, that generation is gone. That's not the current generation of new workers. So we want to think about China's new generation as having a better lifestyle, life consumption balance, and work life balance, and have a different vision, different perspective. They're not going to compete and race for the bottom. And that's, that kind of job is going to be passed on to other countries. It's always a cycle of renewal.
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