In an article published to its official WeChat account on Tuesday, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) accused unnamed “foreign organizations” of trying to brainwash Chinese youth into “lying flat” (also “lying down” or “slacking off”), a meme-fueled lifestyle trend that eschews the rat race for a simpler, slower-paced, less ambitious life. The article alleges that these hostile foreign forces have been keeping themselves busy bankrolling anti-China media outlets, think-tanks, and online influencers to mass-produce short video content and spread messages equating hard work with exploitation, upholding slackerism as a form of justice, and insisting that a lack of social mobility makes striving pointless. Exhorting readers to “Be vigilant! Beware the sinister manipulators behind slackerist rhetoric” and “Break free! Resist the mindless crowd, and lead a sensible life,” the piece ends with a rousing call for China’s young people to work hard, strive for a better life, and contribute to rejuvenating and strengthening the nation.
The MSS article was widely republished under various headlines and promoted by state-media outlets such as Xinhua, China News Service, China Central Television (CCTV), and China National Radio (CNR). It also spread across Chinese social media, including Weibo, where the hashtag #Foreign Organizations Bankroll Influencers to Promote Slackerism rose to the top of the trending search list. On sites and platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu, and others, the piece was met with a collective eyeroll, as comments sections were flooded with responses from readers challenging the framing of the MSS article, questioning the existence of these “hostile foreign forces,” and pointing out that the “lying flat” movement grew out of frustration with domestic factors such as high unemployment, unrelenting competition, excessive overtime and “996” schedules, weak labor-law enforcement, and declining social mobility. Some commenters noted a whiff of desperation in the MSS article, and wondered if the Chinese authorities, thrown into a panic by seemingly intractable economic problems, had resorted to “shooting at ghosts,” i.e. blaming unnamed enemies for their own woes. (Earlier this month, the MSS published another fairly alarmist article, “Seeing Through the Spy ‘Playbook’ in Spring Recruitment,” which warns recent graduates to be alert to foreign intelligence operatives and agencies attempting to “disguise themselves as legitimate companies or research institutions” during spring hiring season.)
CDT Chinese editors have compiled some of the recent comments on the MSS post from Weibo, Kuaishou, and X, a selection of which are translated below. Among the themes are skepticism that unnamed “hostile foreign forces” are to blame for China’s domestic structural or economic woes; jokes about bosses and others in their daily lives being covert foreign forces; humorous requests for stable, lucrative jobs “within the system”; and confusion over mixed messaging that seems to forbid both “lying down” and “rising up” to take a stand:
Weibo commenter from Guangdong: Don’t try to blame “foreign forces” if young people are “lying down”; that won’t solve the problem. Instead, consider when “lie-downism” first became popular. The phrase “six wallets” cropped up around 2018, when government experts were actively encouraging young couples to pool their savings and their parents’ and in-laws’ savings (i.e. “six wallets”) to buy homes. If young people took a step back and realized this meant draining the savings—and the future—of their entire family to buy one measly house, you can see why they’d consider “lying down” a more sensible option, right? The “six wallets” theory is just one of many factors contributing to lie-downism.
雷诺2023: Obviously, anyone who decides not to get married or have kids has been bewitched by hostile foreign forces.
椌蕪花園理髮店: Sounds like a good deal, actually. If someone’s willing to subsidize you to slack off, why wouldn’t you take them up on it?
黑风大王生气气: First specify who you’re talking about. Firing at imaginary enemies is meaningless.
SKrAs299792458: Come on, if you’re trying to scare us, you can do better than that!
大岛元太: I suspect my boss is a “hostile foreign force,” because we work ourselves to death every day, but we’re still broke. Clearly, our spymaster boss is using this tactic to incite employees to slack off, the diabolical fiend.
有味的光: Turns out that hostile foreign forces are pretty dull. Their nefarious plots are the same lame, boring things I get up to.
mikuoa: Give everyone a two-day weekend, an eight-hour workday, and the full “five social insurances” plus the “housing provident fund.” Enforce the Labor Law properly, and those hostile foreign forces will be speechless.
用户7969870671: O Great Organization, you had me at “slacking off.” Now, where do I sign up?
ke_cheng23602: “Foreign organizations” is a catch-all term, a basket you can stuff anything into. Weak economy? Blame foreign organizations. Low birth rate? Pin it on those foreign organizations. Low marriage rate, high divorce rate? Darn those hostile foreign organizations. Everything’s their fault.
POI_KakuSAMA: “Lying flat” [躺平, tǎngpíng] clearly impinges on the sacred name of the current Emperor. Such a taboo word must be sanctioned. The Emperor must always stand firm, and never lie down. [The second character (平, píng, meaning “flat,” “even,” “level”), is also the last character in Xi Jinping’s name (习近平, Xí Jìnpíng). In Chinese imperial culture, using the characters in the ruling Emperor’s given name in certain contexts was considered taboo.]
XIAOQINGMANTAN: If you don’t want your “oxen and horses” to lie flat, you need to actually provide jobs for them. Is there anyone who’s unaware of the dire employment situation in China right now?
lingjlng2: This is pretty funny. The poor little spin doctors can’t even keep their stories straight anymore. 😂
jenner70873905: Hostile foreign forces: “Apparently everyone’s on our payroll, which basically amounts to no one being on the payroll.”
sfflwbd: Fine, we won’t slack off anymore. Tomorrow we’ll rouse ourselves and go demand some accountability from corrupt officials.
云千河: I don’t want to be a slacker. I want a government job where I can “put down roots at the grassroots level.” [a reference to a phrase used in the MSS article.]
慈悲心肠: I want to be a public servant so I can Serve the People.
Frebel_L: If everyone slacked off, who’d be left to exploit?
youran8964: The CCP is terrified that if the “chives” start slacking, they won’t be able to chop them down any more.
wurenhua: The CCP can slack off, but the Chinese people aren’t allowed to.
没有粗面x: The “oxen and horses” would rather daydream than keep their noses to the grindstone, and all of our problems are caused by outsiders.
gfwsucks: Since we aren’t allowed to lie down, does this mean we can stand up and storm the barricades? [Chinese]
In addition to the voluble online backlash to the MSS piece, CDT editors have observed some online censorship of the topic. Weibo appears to have banned the hashtag #Lying Flat once more; it had been subject to temporary bans in the past. CDT has also documented the closure of WeChat account 野柚的显微镜 (yě yòu de xiǎnwēijìng, “wild pomelo microscope”) after it published an article criticizing the MSS for “reopening the wound” of the death of educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng. Zhang, who died of a heart attack last month at the age of 41, was widely known for his relentless work ethic, penchant for long-distance running, and habit of getting by on only three or four hours of sleep a night. In many ways, Zhang epitomized both the highs and the lows of contemporary ambition and striving. Another article recently added to CDT’s archive, from WeChat blogger Mu Qi Says, cites statistics from the International Labour Organization (ILO) showing that the average annual number of working hours per person in China is 2,548 hours, the highest among the OECD nations. Mu Qi argues that Chinese people have never really “slacked off,” and in fact, they should be encouraged to work fewer hours and enjoy the fruits of China’s past economic growth and “demographic dividends.”
The “lying flat” or “lying down” movement, which first became popular in 2021, has been the target of government criticism and suppression before. In May of 2021, a “lie-downism” Douban group with close to 10,000 members was banned; a month later, a censorship directive ordered e-commerce platforms to stop selling merchandise featuring slacker-themed memes or slogans. In 2023, after an official campaign attempted to counter slacker sentiment by touting the “Red Flag Canal Spirit,” unemployed and underemployed Chinese young people were unimpressed and unconvinced: some countered that they “weren’t so much lying down as finding it impossible to get ahead.” Against the backdrop of persistently high youth unemployment, officials banned a number of popular “lying down” influencers and vloggers in the summer of 2025.
