cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59853667
People across China persistently express discontent through “lying flat” and public protest.
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Earlier this year, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) conducted a campaign that blamed “foreign forces” for funding the spread in China of “lying flat” (躺平), a term that has become widely used to describe the rejection of societal expectations that push individuals to strive for material and social achievement. The official media attributing the trend of lying flat to foreign interference was promptly pilloried by Chinese netizens who filled online comment sections with criticism and satire. A popular vlogger sarcastically complained that he wanted to “report” foreign forces for failing to pay him despite his tireless efforts to lie flat. These responses have all since been censored.
The CCP’s seeming obsession with curbing the lying flat mindset is worth understanding. The term’s popularity rose in response to China’s grueling “996” work culture, in which many companies expect their employees to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 6 days each week. But as the concept of lying flat has expanded, the CCP has become worried that it reflects an underlying resistance to the party’s designs for Chinese people, and that an increasing number of citizens simply don’t care about or support the idea of working harder to contribute to a more powerful state. The Communist Party’s leader Xi Jinping has explicitly spoken out against the lying flat attitude.
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The issue of popular indifference to nationalist goals has gained greater urgency for the CCP as a persistently sluggish domestic economy has fueled the popularity of lying flat and other forms of societal opposition, including protests. The CDM [China Dissent Monitor] project has documented a rise in public protests, many of which have been driven by economic grievances like unpaid wages, unfinished housing, or land confiscation. While the CCP has long been concerned with preventing public mobilization, which it euphemistically calls “maintaining social stability,” new directives to strengthen community surveillance and prevent large numbers of migrant workers from “idling in their hometowns” reveal a growing anxiety that the spread of discontent is fueling more dissent.
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CDM has recorded more than 16,000 protests since June 2022, occurring in every region of the country. In 2025, CDM documented 5,343 dissent events, the highest annual number of protests recorded by the project, marking a 44 percent rise over the previous year. While typically sparked by economic grievances, many events are also driven by issues like school safety, environmental causes, or official misconduct. At least a third of protests are directed at the government or other state actors.
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Through media controls, the CCP attempts to restrict citizens’ ability to grasp the extent of lying flat and public protests in China, but it fails to fundamentally alter the spirit of defiance that so many of the country’s citizens possess. International actors—especially those with large public platforms—can help by amplifying the everyday protest of people in China who are acting in defiance of a party-state that seeks to silence them.
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