Five years ago, Luo Huazhong discovered that he enjoyed doing nothing. He quit his job as a factory worker in China, biked 2092km from Sichuan province to Tibet and decided he could get by on odd jobs and $60 a month from his savings. He called his new lifestyle “lying flat”. “I have been chilling,” Luo, 31, wrote in a blog post in April, describing his way of life.

He titled his post “Lying Flat Is Justice”. Soon, the post was being celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anticonsumerist manifesto. “Lying flat” went viral and has since become a broader statement about Chinese society.

A generation ago, the route to success in China was to work hard, get married and have kids. The country’s authoritarianism was seen as a fair trade-off as millions were lifted out of poverty. But with people working longer hours and housing prices rising faster than incomes, many youngsters fear they will be the first generation not to do better than their parents.

They are now defying the country’s long-held prosperity narrative by refusing to participate in it.

Luo’s blog was removed by censors, who saw it as affront to Beijing’s economic ambitions. Mentions of “lying flat” — tangping, as it is known in Mandarin — are heavily restricted on the Chinese internet. An official counter narrative has also emerged, encouraging young people to work hard for the sake of the country’s future.

To lie flat is the opposite of what China’s leaders have asked of their people. The ruling Communist Party has targeted the idea as a threat to stability in China. Censors have deleted a tangping group with over 9,000 members on Douban, an internet forum. In May, China’s internet regulator ordered online platforms to “strictly restrict” posts on tangping. https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/PrintArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2021%2F07%2F04&entity=ar02802&ts=20210704005529&uq=20210618124342&mode=text