Biao Xiang

Step-locked life:

Why do young Chinese professionals give up their right to time, and how can they reclaim it?

Ai, a 32-year old commercial lawyer working in Beijing told me that she cannot remember when was the last time that she walked under the sun. She goes to the office every morning before seven and never leaves the law firm before eight in the evening, including on many weekends. Like many working populations in China, Ai’s right to time—the right to protected private time and the right to negotiate how one’s time should be used—is severely compromised. This is true for both manual and professional workers. Some technology companies adopt the so-called 996 work schedule (from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week), which in some cases was “upgraded” to the 007 model (midnight to midnight, seven days a week). These practices are clearly against Chinese law. The Chinese Communist Party adopted the “Eight-Hour Working Day Resolution” in 1922, within the first year of its establishment. The 1994 Labour Law elevated the eight-hour working day to a statutory legal entitlement. The same law grants female employees a maternity leave of no less than ninety days, which was extended in many provinces to 158 days or more by 2025, with an additional 15 days’ paternity leave. Why has this progressive law failed to protect employees’ right to time?
What is even more puzzling is that, many of those who suffer the most from the long work hours are relatively young (25-45 years old), well educated, well informed, having grown up as the only child in the family, and are therefore sensitive to personal rights, confident and even demanding in many aspects of life. Why do they not push back? Among those whom I interviewed (mainly teachers, technicians and public institution employees), many seem attached to the packed working life. Xu is a middle school teacher of the same age as Ai. She was under heavy work pressure to improve students’ examination scores. When she talked about her worries, however, she mentioned free time as a trouble. “I panic and feel guilty during holidays, and I always think I must do something. Then I think, what should I do now? Really, I don’t care about the workload, as long as I can follow a clear path.”
It is hard to imagine anyone like Xu, who is afraid of free time, demanding free time. But without such a demand from employees, the right to time, like any right, will not materialise. Young Chinese professionals can be highly critical of China’s strenuous working conditions. and yet, they appear acquiescent to the deprivation of their right to time. I suggest, based on my research, that this acquiescence reflects how their general perception of life—including the perception of what is desirable and what is fearful—impede them from taking realistic actions to seek alternatives. As such, there is an urgent need to clarify this general condition of being, which I call “step-locked” life.

If you miss out on one step, you may miss out on all steps

A step-locked life is fundamentally an imaginary of life. In this imaginary, if you lose out on one step, you lose out on everything. There will be no chance to make up for the loss later. This explains why parents in China start investing in children’s education as early as nursery—to avoid “losing out at the starting line (of the race).” I know more than one pre-school tuition agencies in China that named themselves “The Starting Line”. It is widely believed that the quality of the primary school a child attends will greatly affect the quality of his/her junior high school, which in turn will affect his/her chances of entering a quality high school, university, and company.
This imaginary is generally accurate and has been repeatedly validated. For instance, there is the so-called “phenomenon of being 35 years old”, according to which one must reach a certain station by thirty-five if one hopes to ever be successful. Such an idea—prevalent across professional sectors—sends a chilling warning about the consequences of missing critical steps in career progression. As one magazine article comments on careers in civil service, „If you don’t reach the rank ke (typically the head of a small office who supervises 2-5 staff) at the age of 35, your future is over; if you have not yet crossed the threshold of the deputy chu (head of a department supervising 5-20 staff) by the age of 45, you are most likely stuck there all your life; if you are still hanging at the level of full chu at 50, you had better think of a strategy of exit.“ In universities, one’s career prospect is doomed if one fails to join the tenure track by 35. In the private sector—specially in the IT industry—the chance of being laid off increases dramatically once one ages past 35. Some attribute “the curse of 35” to competition: since so many people are competing for jobs, why shouldn’t the employer pick the younger ones? Young employees are desirable because they tend to be more obedient, flexible, willing to learn, and are thought to learn faster. They are also more likely to be single and can stay in the office for 10 hours a day. Finally, and probably most importantly for the employer, the age limit is meant to distinguish the “truly capable” from those less so. As a technopreneur told me, in his view, those who distinguish themselves before 35 are the ones with real potential and should be kept as the mainstay of the company. The rest are disposable and should be let go whenever one can find younger employees.
Being step-locked also means that a successful step must always be followed by another step that will lead to even more success. Otherwise, the act of diverting from a successful path and trying out something else is sometimes considered as “irresponsible”. Many young Chinese are fearful of what will happen if their parents see them “stepping backwards” (tuibu). As Su, a young female professional, stated, „It’s very difficult if your shinny upward progression is suddenly paused or takes an unexpected turn.” Su quit her secured job from a law firm against her parents’ will two years earlier. “Parents can’t take it. My parents still feel that I made them unable to raise their heads [among friends and relatives].” Her parents would ask her what went wrong: “‘you used to be the best kid when you were young [compared to other kids of relatives and colleagues]. XX’s kid was doing much worse than you, but now look at what he has achieved.’” In the beginning, her parents told others that Su had come home because she switched to remote work during the COVID pandemic. When the pandemic ended, her parents refused to walk with her in the condo, fearing that they would have to explain to their neighbours why their daughter was still there.
Step-locked life is internalized as a fear of regret. „I must not let myself regret in the future“. This is a common explanation given by my interlocutors about why they must be so careful in planning which step to take at which time. Regret is arguably one of the most painful human experiences, and the fear of regret in the future shapes one’s actions in the present. This in turn induces a disaster mentality: a mindset in which any small mistake could lead to catastrophes later. My interlocutors attribute this to what is commonly referred to as “the very low toleration rate for mistakes in society”. They feel that the margin for error in society is so narrow that one never has a second chance.

The context of the step-locked life: Compressed, inclusive, competitive and tightly-organized development

Why has the margin for error in the Chinese society become so narrow? Step-locked life results from a number of features of China’s rapid development, which are in turn historically conditioned.
First,China’s rapid economic development after the 1980s has been a highly compressed process, a continuation of China’s search for modernity that began in the late 19th century. Shocked by the opium wars (1840s) and facing the danger of being divided and occupied by foreign powers, the Chinese elite were determined to catch up with the rest of the world by extraordinary means. Socialism was meant to be a great leap forward, skipping the developmental stages that the West went through to quickly become their equal. When, in the 1980s, the leadership decided that socialism was not an effective means to deliver compressed development, the Communist party launched its market-oriented reforms. “Time is money, efficiency is life” was one of first slogans that was put up on walls to replace earlier revolutionary lines. This sense of historical urgency, enshrined in official ideology, translates into individuals’ perception of life: one should always plan actively and take initiatives in life, instead of simply following it. This energetic mode of living tends to be single-minded: people are encouraged to concentrate energy on a single target, and supress other needs such as rest, friendship, and even one’s own health. In a compressed economy, a high speed of development is not only desired, but is also necessary as a solution to problems. As Chinese officials often remind the public: problems that emerged during development should be solved through even faster development.
Second, China’s development, while rapidly widening inequality, is still inclusive. When China started its reform at the end of the 1970s, most of the citizens were equally poor but were also equally endowed, thanks to the relatively egalitarian provisions of education and health care during the socialist era. Everyone was at the same starting line. Also, due to their shared socialist ideals, everyone believed that they were entitled to participate in and benefit from national development. The fact that the earliest beneficiaries of the reform were those in marginal positions, such as peasants and unemployed youths, conveyed the strong message that anyone could make it, so long as they work hard. The inclusiveness of the development has also been institutionally sustained by expanding social welfare. By the end of 2015, more than 95% of Chinese citizens were covered by medical insurance. The level of coverage remains low, but it prevents large sections of the population from being excluded from the national economy.
When 1.4 billion people chase the same dream in compressed, market-led development, this naturally leads to fierce competition. In the step-locked life, what a correct step is—which step one must take at which moment—is defined through a comparison of oneself to others. If everyone is taking that step then you must take it too, and you should always try to take the step ahead of others. Competition is itself nothing remarkable, but what makes competition in China unusual is that it is tightly organized. Competition never spontaneously emerges among individuals horizontally. Rather, competition requires an authority to set criteria, to judge, to enforce rules, and to give out rewards. It is therefore vertically organized. Competition in China is tightly organised firstly in the sense that the paths towards a desirable life are limited and narrow. It is increasingly rare that one achieves what one wants by taking a new route, for instance having a successful career without a university degree. Competition in China is tightly organised also through highly visible and nearly universal—although not always explicit—criteria of differentiation. People compare themselves—and are themselves compared—to classmates, colleagues and even friends on academic scores, work performance, incomes, assets or status. The socialist legacy, despite forbidding competition around individuals’ material benefits, built an elaborate and highly effective apparatus that differentiated individuals for the purpose of political mobilization; for instance, dividing staff into “labour models”, “advanced elements” and “backward elements”. While these titles were obsolete in the reform era, the general method of incentivizing individuals through differentiating, rewarding and shaming has become more entrenched in various institutions. Finally, through the strict regulation of individual life—especially of professionals—competition is tightly organised. The education system is a typical case. The state controls what content students learn, what examinations they take and what consequences their successes or failures bear. To give an example: the utterly banal status of “fresh college graduates”—every college graduate starts as a fresh college graduate—has now become something that the graduates must cherish, as employers prefer fresh college graduates to those who graduated even a year earlier. Though this is partly because companies believe that new graduates are easier to manage, the government also pressures companies to prioritize “fresh” graduates so as to create the impression that most college graduates are finding jobs. Meanwhile, “older” graduates’ unemployment is regarded as less socially sensitive, and so they are ignored. Regardless of the reasons, the clear effect is that fresh graduates must strive to succeed before they become “previous graduates”.

Stepping out or stepping aside

The pressure associated with the step-locked life becomes even greater when economic growth slows down, a trend that has become evident since 2015. Young Chinese professionals now must work harder to compete for diminishing opportunities, while at the same time the actual returns from competition are declining. In response, some have “stepped out” of the system. They quit jobs from large corporations, move to localities with low costs, try out new lifestyles as farmers, shopkeepers, digital nomads, or simply become unemployed for a period. Stepping out is however a very costly strategy. Few can afford to do so, and those who do often face severe pressure from their families. Furthermore, because the step-locked life has become so internalized, those that “step out” may feel lost. Ke, a 26-year-old man, quit his job from a demanding position in a public institution (for a while he had to sleep in the office) to take a rest and recover his heath. He found that the free time made him anxious. „My education has given me the habit of acting like a machine.” Ke reflects, “I always want to save hours from sleep, I always think how I can study more and work more.” Professionals like Ke are not only deprived of the right to time, they are also deprived of the capacity of make use of free time.
In comparison to stepping out, a strategy of “stepping aside” may be more realistic. “Stepping aside” means that a person cultivates the capacity of finding, protecting and using free time whenever possible without quitting the system altogether. Some young Chinese professionals are doing just that. They protect their free time by occupying it with activities such as organizing City Walks, setting up experimental theatres, participating in reading groups, and filming their neighbourhood. One interlocutor decided to limit herself to a 30-minute commuting radius from home when applying for jobs. By doing so she wants to gain more free time. Those who are taking steps aside appear more likely to negotiate their step-locked life; for instance, by postponing promotion applications or staying away from job-related contests. Key to stepping aside is cultivating social relations, initiating activities, and even demarcating physical space (for instance the daily commuting radius). These activities are important as they create concrete conditions under which people meaningfully utilize their free time, experience the attraction of what the right to time brings to life, and hopefully build the confidence needed to demand the right to time in the future.

Prof. Biao Xiang,
Direktor des Max-Planck-Instituts
für Sozialanthropologie in Halle