Here Lies the Dream
Sloth's Opinion of the Bailan Movement
This video captures the essence of the CCP's greatest nightmare: the Laying Flat movement, born from the sheer despair gripping China's next generation.
China managed to drag itself out of being a third-world wasteland by transforming into the world's factory floor, birthing the infamous 996 culture where workers grind from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, like human cogs in a relentless machine.
And for fellow "economists" who can't grasp reality without their precious numbers, here's your daily productivity data-porn.
Graph from Noahpinion1
Now Sloth will explain why China's economic recovery is nothing but a pipe dream, and it's all thanks to the 'Let it Rot' movement's growing influence on the workforce.
In an aging society, it's the working population that carries the burden of supporting both the retired elderly and young children. But China, following the same demographic cliff as its Asian neighbors, has run out of young workers willing to shoulder this crushing load.
Again here is the graph the data-dependent types who won't believe anything without a chart. This is population pyramid you've probably seen a thousand times before, during the geography class.2
As is evident, China's population has morphed into a ticking time bomb, with its massive working-age cohort rapidly going into retirement. This demographic disaster, courtesy of the one-child policy, is now compounded by ayouth unemployment that has undoubtedly soared past the last credible figure of 21.3%, no matter what Beijing claims.3 With the recent graduate crash due to over-competition and lack of career progression, only one thing can be said:
The Extravagance is gone
Now, we venture into territory where no spreadsheet has dared to tread. Facing an impossible dream and a job market saturated with millions of desperate graduates, Chinese youth have wisely concluded that this is a rigged game they can't win, no matter how hard they grind, and so they've chosen to retreat from it entirely.
Their tenets are brutally simple: no dating, no marriage, no property, no children. A complete withdrawal from the life script their parents and the Party demand of them4 .
The crackdowns on gaming and education have only served to spotlight this harsh reality even further. While Beijing's propaganda machine can fake numbers and censor dissent as they've always done, they can't bleach the sight of homeless youth sleeping on the streets from people's corneas. Despite his attempts to rally the young generation like his predecessors before him, Xi Jinping's pleas fall on deaf ears of a generation that's already checked out.5
And as we say in the New Right, nature is healing through several methods.
1) Saving
When protest becomes impossible and change unlikely, logic dictates saving one's hide. With odds stacked higher than skyscrapers, young Chinese have realized that spending less means better survival odds during downturns, miserable wages, and layoffs. Their confidence has evaporated, and frugal-efficient consumption has become the new face of social selection. They cook instead of ordering takeout, hunt for discounts religiously, and treat credit spending or home ownership as bad jokes.
To a system obsessed with excess, nothing is more terrifying than a population that scorns vanity and guards their future with iron prudence. One glance at reality should bury any illusion that the 'Work hard, Play hard' still exists. Chinese youth now measure life success by having 30,000-100,000 Yuan in their accounts.
But if you think the CCP's economy and its endless greed can climb back against this virtue of abstinence, let Sloth introduce you to Level 2 of this resistance.
2) Enlightened Retirement
Yes, you heard that right - Chinese youth are so thoroughly burnt out by... well, everything, that they've collectively decided to take an indefinite timeout. They're escaping to a simpler, finding solace among friends who won't measure their worth by paycheck or career ladder position.
From tending small gardens to impromptu cooking sessions, it's crystal clear these young people are done with the soul-crushing rat race. Instead of chasing loans and promotions, they're embracing a minimalist existence; working just enough to survive, not to excel, prioritizing their sanity over a society that's already written them off.
Unable to change the exploitative system, they've simply changed their mindset, throwing off the shackles of consumer culture and all its empty promises to embrace a nearly monastic lifestyle of simple contentment.
But we have talked about those who reject capitalism, now let’s talk about its final hope.
3) Go Nuts
With every traditional path to success crumbling, the internet - particularly Douyin - has become the last refuge for youth seeking to escape poverty, drawn by its deceptively low entry barriers.
The competition is brutally fierce, with streamers willing to debase themselves in increasingly desperate ways to stand out. Some have essentially created softcore content, while others have devolved into glorified shopping channel hosts, all fighting for survival in this digital colosseum.
The demographics tell the whole story: most streamers are between 16-29, with a mere 2% hoarding 80% of all revenue. And now, with China's economy in free fall, even this last desperate avenue has started to collapse.
Which brings us too…
The stock market; pumped up by CCP's desperate cash injections, proving once again that government spending and GDP numbers are nothing but a fantasy divorced from reality.
These fresh-faced investors, too naive or desperate to consider the virtue of leaving the rat race, dive into debt hoping for quick riches, only to get caught in market turbulence. Trapped by sunk cost fallacy, they suffer the classic rookie mistake of failing to cut losses.
And like everything else in China, the stock market is just another elaborate Ponzi scheme, except this one comes with rules designed to ensure the house always wins.
Conclusion
The Chinese youth have split into two camps: those who've already quit the rigged system entirely, and those still clinging to false hope like gambling addicts chasing their imaginary jackpot. Now, with the return of our glorious Don himself, the trade war will resume and multiply these problems by several magnitudes.
Sloth hates to break it to any hopeful souls, but the promised manufacturing uptick will never arrive, nor will the desperately awaited baby boom. The next generation of Chinese youth have lost all will to climb the ladder of the machine; their dreams have burned to ash.
We are now at a turning point in history where an empire that has endured since the dawn of civilization must check out like the Assyrian. What will emerge from this ash will certainly be worthy of noting in the annals of history. The “check-out” generation may have one trick left to play, but Sloth was certain China as it existed will never recover.