Xu Jilin on the Politics of Resentment among China’s Youth

“An ‘unorganised force’, filled with ‘ressentiment’, possesses undeniably large destructive power—like a great flood, it is difficult to channel. This must be taken extremely seriously.” - Xu Jilin

Today’s edition opens with an introduction by Timothy Cheek, Professor in the Department of History and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. A leading authority on modern Chinese history, his research focuses on the history of the Chinese Communist Party and intellectuals in twentieth-century and contemporary China. He published The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History in 2015 and, more recently, has co-edited The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives (2021). He also runs a collaborative project entitled “Revisiting the Revolution”, translating recent PRC scholarship on China’s modern revolutionary and social history. Many thanks to him for contributing to this newsletter. — James and Thomas

Xu Jilin (b. 1957) is a well-known Shanghai academic and public intellectual who has been widely translated and featured in Sinification. An active public commentator as well as prolific historian of Chinese intellectuals and political culture in the modern period, Xu is identified as a Chinese liberal and proponent of reform within the current Chinese system. His writings before 2015 addressed hot political topics of the day, such as the political role of intellectuals in China (the 2004 debate over ‘public intellectuals’), what China’s role in the world should be (the debate over Tianxia-ism), and humanistic readings of Party ideology. However, like his PRC compatriots, Xu has stepped back from political commentary under the strictures of current Party policy. Instead, he has turned to social commentary with a focus on youth issues and light essays and online lectures plumbing both modern and traditional history for useful lessons—not, as before, for Party leadership but for fellow citizens in general and youth in particular. In this way he continues his commitment as a public intellectual in China’s “New Era.”

In this piece Xu dissects the phenomena of “lying flat” (tangping), “involution” (neijuan), and the troubling attitudes of China’s youthful “post-90s” generation. That attitude, expressed in the low motivation of lying flat and distrust of the meritocracy described as involution—in which more work does not result in advancement—is described by Xu as yuanhen, “resentment” in simple terms, though Xu displays his academic chops by citing German sociologist Max Scheler’s theory of ressentiment. This term, it emerges, is the key point and warning of the essay: such broad-based, diffuse resentment against fellow youth who have done well and toward all elites is a volatile social cocktail that in modern history led to violent revolution (Xu invokes the ressentiment of Chinese intellectuals before 1949). Thus, Xu’s essay is both a recognition of the social experience of this generation (and a useful introduction to readers of Sinification) and also a warning to those with the power to give this youth some hope and opportunity. As he concludes, “These are grave questions that China must now confront in earnest.”

—Timothy Cheek

Key Points

1. “Lying flat” among younger generations is a symptom of dissatisfaction with the inescapable realities of blocked social mobility and reduced opportunities, rather than a lifestyle choice that is actively made.

2. The phenomenon is closely associated with “next-wave culture”—the experience of those born in the 1990s and 2000s, who came of age amid increasingly ossified social hierarchies and utilitarian outlooks.

3. This lies in contrast to the idealism and expanding opportunities experienced by the “former-wave” generations, which fostered faith in personal striving and a sense of individual destinies being bound to the nation’s future.

4. Those who claim to have actively embraced lying flat are either privileged “pseudo-adherents”, whose withdrawal is enabled by security rather than imposed by constraint, or a small minority of genuine philosophical Cynics.

5. Most adherents of lying flat, however, are reluctant. Beneath the outward withdrawal from society lies deep resentment towards a system that demands constant effort while distributing its rewards unequally.

6. Faced with these diminishing prospects in the modern meritocracy, lying flat psychologically allows individuals to lower their expectations while continuing to function.

7. Lying flat is therefore also associated with the spread of “low desire” among young people, who grew up amid material abundance but feel that there is little prospect of achieving distant ambitions.

8. It also reflects a withdrawal from broad ideological narratives among the younger generations. It elevates the individual, spontaneous will above all else, but it is the will of a “hollow subject” rather than an active intellect.

9. Such withdrawal does not preclude the risk of political instability. Historically, in China’s mobile yet hierarchical society, frustrated aspirations have tended to accumulate into a destructive “disorganised force” that cannot readily be bargained with.

10. China’s leadership must take this problem extremely seriously: accumulated resentment could develop into a destructive “great flood” that elites may struggle to control.

The Scholar

Name: Xu Jilin (许纪霖)
Year of birth: March 1957 (age: 69)
Positions: Professor and Zijiang Scholar, East China Normal University (ECNU); Deputy Director of the Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture (under the Ministry of Education), ECNU
Research Focus: China’s modern and contemporary intellectual history; 20th and 21st century Chinese culture
Education: BA East China Normal University (1978-1982)
Other: Owing to the Cultural Revolution, the university entrance exam was still suspended when Xu graduated from high school in 1975. As a result, he was sent to work in the countryside as part of the “Down to the Countryside” movement. He began his bachelor’s degree in 1978 after the exam was reinstated.
Experience abroad: Australian National University (2000); National University of Singapore (2000); Harvard University (2001-2); University of British Columbia (2004); University of Tokyo (2005); Taiwan’s Academia Sinica (2008); France’s École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (2009); and Japan’s Aichi University (2010).

LYING FLAT AND THE CULTURE OF THE ‘90s GENERATION
By Xu Jilin (许纪霖）
Published in the journal “Exploration and Free Views” in December 2021
Thank you to Xu Jilin for his permission to share this article
Translated by James Farquharson
(Illustration by ChatGPT)

I. Two Cultural Waves

“Lying flat” [躺平] was one of the most fervent topics of debate in 2021, becoming a sociocultural phenomenon of emblematic significance. Though the term’s meaning is open to interpretation, my view is that the most quintessential form of “lying flat” is a phenomenon inseparable from the generation born in the ‘90s—a manifestation of “next wave” culture.

[Notes: “Lying flat” (躺平) is a movement which arose in 2021, calling for retreat from the competitive pressures of modern Chinese society. “‘Next wave’” culture” (“后浪"文化) is a term originating from a state-produced 2020 Youth Day video that refers to the experience of the post-‘90s generations, born into relative wealth and stability—but as Xu argues, with fewer opportunities for upward social mobility—compared to the earlier, “former wave” generations, whose experience was shaped by historical upheaval, social transformations and intellectual ferment.]

One might use three different lenses or perspectives to analyse social phenomena in China, namely the “left–right”, “upper–lower” and “before–after” divides. What one means by “left–right” is analysing young people through the lens of their ideological and political positions. This analytical approach yielded great results [卓为有效] in the wake of the great debate [大论战] between liberals and the New Left in the 1990s. [Note: The mid-1990s debate pitted liberals emphasising rights and constitutional reform against New Left critics of marketisation and inequality.] In recent years though, the inherent limitations of such an ideology-based approach to drawing distinctions have become apparent. The ‘90s generation grew up amidst a “depoliticised” era. Most are completely indifferent [漠不关心] to any kind of grand narrative, with scant interest in either left- or right-wing ideologies. Hence, trying to understand this generation through a traditional “left–right” divide is asking the wrong question, especially since the complexity of China’s contemporary social problems cannot exactly be encompassed by “left” and “right” distinctions.

The second approach, that of looking at the “upper–lower” strata, has attracted growing attention amidst the polarisation of society’s wealth distribution, the intensification of “involution” [内卷] and the ossification of social mobility. China’s modern concept of lying flat resembles the idea of the “lower stream society” [下流社会] that emerged in Japan at the turn of the century. It is a life choice made, either willingly or unwillingly, by young people in the lower reaches of the middle class who have lost hope of upward mobility. One might locate the sociological origins of lying flat within that relationship between “upper and lower” strata in the social structure.

What I want to focus on today is the third, or “former–latter” dimension. This involves examining lying flat from the perspective of generational succession, as a phenomenon quintessential to those born in the ‘90s. I have a basic analytical framework for generational change in contemporary China. Essentially, those born in the 1950s and 1960s are now the older generation, or the quintessential “former wave” [前浪]; the quintessential “next wave” [后浪] is made up of new human beings born in the ‘90s and ‘00s; and the intervening generation of those born in the ‘70s and ‘80s are less typical, sharing characteristics of both the former and latter waves. Those of the former wave, the ‘50s and ‘60s generation, had their ingrained dispositions formed during the “enlightenment” atmosphere of the last century’s end, and are possessed of a post-idealist spirit [Note: Xu’s own generation]. For them, without convictions and ideals, poetry and distant horizons, life is meaningless [何以谈人生].

The ‘90s and ‘00s “next wave”, by contrast, came of age in the secularised atmosphere that followed the 1990s. The intensification of exam-oriented schooling and the influence of a utilitarian philosophy of life that recognises only success at the expense of values have created a vast, perhaps even unbridgeable, gulf between many young members of the next wave (though not all of them) and their parents’ generation. This spans their values and outlook on life, their modes of thought and their aesthetic tastes. It was against this background of generational conflict that the phenomenon known as “lying flat” emerged.

However bitter or exhausting life becomes, the former-wave generation has always believed in the value and meaning of striving. So long as one makes a personal effort, there is always hope and a future path ahead. If you ultimately failed, you accepted your fate [认命]. The older generation possesses a deeply rooted concern for family, nation and the wider world [家国天下]. Having lived through great historical upheavals and dramatic ups-and-downs, they believe that individual destiny and the nation’s future are interwoven and cannot be separated for an instant. They delight in discussing great affairs of state and the globe: the nation’s lofty prospects are also their own future destinies. Yet if the parents’ generation were “born under a red flag” [红旗下的蛋], their children’s generation are “born under a national flag” [国旗下的蛋]. The ‘90s “next wave” grew up amid China’s rise, possessing an instinctive love for the motherland and the state. They feel “red by nature”: the motherland is the home with which they naturally identify, while the state enjoys unquestioned legitimacy as the political embodiment of their national community.

Paradoxically, however, whereas the older generation cannot separate the self from family and nation, for the younger generation the self is the self and the state is the state. They seem like two entirely different “skins”. Hence we find the emergence in the ‘90s generation of a peculiar psychological phenomenon that their parents find utterly incomprehensible: “complete confidence in the nation’s future, coupled with utter despair about one’s personal fate”.

“Former wave” and “next wave” are both relative terms. It is revealing here to compare those born in the 1980s with those born in the 1990s. Last year, the promotional film Next Wave, released by the video website Bilibili for Youth Day on 4 May, caused an enormous stir. [Note: Xu is picking up on the backlash that the video generated among young people against the video’s narrative and its “paternalistic” [爹味] tone.] Yet it was chiefly the post-1980 generation that was genuinely excited by it. “The freedom to learn a language, master a craft, appreciate a film or travel to a distant place”: such sweeping confidence and readiness to take on the world [傲视天下] belong precisely to the self-assurance of those born in the ‘80s, who came of age during times favourable to economic development. Good jobs offering freedom of choice were everywhere, while house prices remained within reach through a family-funded deposit and a personal mortgage.

Based on my observations, however, young professionals born in the ‘90s were generally unmoved by Next Wave, even regarding it with a degree of contempt. The outbreak of the China–US trade war, difficulties in finding employment and soaring house prices meant that the ‘90s generation, only recently out of university and newly arrived in the workplace, no longer shared that sense of success and swollen self-confidence enjoyed by those ten years older. To the contrary, trapped instead in involution, “996” work culture [9am–9pm, 6 days a week], and various systemic pressures, they feel that no matter how desperately they struggle, they still cannot discern even the slightest wisp of a future. Promotion, marriage and children have all become dreams visible in the distance but beyond their reach [可望不可即]. Lying flat consequently emerged as a new way of living or posture towards life.

II. The Unbearable Flatness of Being

In fact, before lying flat emerged, another buzzword had already become popular: the so-called “Buddha-like youth” [佛系青年] or “Buddhist lifestyle”. On the surface, lying flat and being Buddha-like may appear to be the same thing, embodying the same posture towards life. Their inner differences, however, are enormous. First, Buddha-like young people consciously choose such a Buddhist lifestyle. Amid fierce competition in the workplace, they began to reconsider and redefine the value of life. Is it really necessary to go all out [打拼]? How, fundamentally, can one live contentedly and find one’s place in the world? A minority of young people therefore changed the way they live. They took a step back from the active life of struggling in order to win and turned instead towards a Zhuangzi-esque or Zen Buddhist life, seeking inner freedom, ease and untroubled spontaneity [逍遥自在]. By contrast, most young people who lie flat have been left with no choice. They lack the inner self-awareness of Buddha-like youth and the willingness to take that pathway. Lying flat is an unwilling makeshift expedient [权宜之计] taken in the face of an inescapable reality. The Buddha-like life involves both rational awareness and a voluntary act of will; lying flat is neither conscious nor voluntary. This is why it contains, deep within it, the resentment to which I will turn later on.

Second, in its quintessential form, the Buddha-like outlook belongs to those born in the ‘80s, whereas lying flat is a cultural phenomenon distinctive to the ‘90s generation. The capital needed for a carefree, Buddha-like existence relies on a certain degree of material security and accumulated wealth. Young people born in the ‘80s could achieve this, but that is an unaffordable luxury for those born in the ‘90s and who have suffered repeated setbacks in the work environment. They can respond to their straitened circumstances only through the passive posture of the “five don’ts” [五不]: do not buy a car, do not buy a home, do not date, do not marry and do not have children. This is the uncomfortable implication of lying flat. It operates on an entirely different level to the carefree facility [潇洒自如] of the Buddha-like youth, and as a state of being, is worlds apart.

As the trend of lying flat sweeps upon us, we need to distinguish the subtle differences within it. Among those proclaiming lying flat the loudest [喊得震天响] in China today, I can identify at least three types: pseudo-adherents of lying flat, active adherents and passive adherents.

The pseudo-adherents of lying flat are the winners in our age of competition; they might equally be called adherents of “winning while lying down” [躺赢]. Some have already achieved financial independence and can let themselves go without too much scruple. Others can say that “my father is Li Gang”: they have powerful patrons behind them and can make money without getting out of bed. [Note: a young man reportedly shouted this following a fatal drink-driving collision in 2010, his father being Li Gang, a senior local police official.] As an online saying puts it, “The successful can cultivate themselves; the poor are left with no choice.” [Note: 达者独善其身，穷者无可奈何, a play on a phrase from Mencius, “if poor, focus on self-cultivation; if successful, work for the benefit of the wider world” 穷则独善其身，达则兼济天下.] The genuine adherents of lying flat are the poor who have no choice, whereas the pseudo adherents are successful people concerned only with their own self-cultivation. All they seek is the peace of mind and untroubled existence afforded by adopting the posture of lying flat. There is nothing tragic about their social position. On the contrary, they are successful or fortunate people whom everyone envies. Who wouldn’t like to win without trying? Most people simply lack the necessary capital and luck.

The second type consists of active adherents of lying flat. They possess a degree of conscious awareness, transforming an existence imposed upon them by necessity into a consciously embraced, “-ism”, a beautiful inner utopia. Lying flat is thereby elevated into the ideology of “lying-flatism”. One of the earliest online posts to launch the discussion, “Lying Flat Is Justice”, was a metaphysical spiritual manifesto:

“I can bask in the sun and sleep in my barrel like Diogenes, or live in a cave like Heraclitus and contemplate the Logos. Since no intellectual current genuinely upholding human subjectivity has ever existed in this land, I can create one for myself. Lying flat is my philosophical activity. Only by lying flat can man become the measure of all things.”

In this sense, they may be understood as China’s Diogeneses, its philosophical Cynics. Adorno once said that it is impossible to live a right life in a wrong world. Consequently, these active adherents withdraw from the fiercely competitive arena of wealth and status [名利场] to seek, in the immaterial realm, a secure sense of self.

Unlike the Cynics of ancient Greece, however, such a “self” possesses a distinctly modern characteristic: it has been stripped of values. When they say that “only by lying flat can man become the measure of all things”, this “man” is not Man with a capital M, endowed with a universal humanity, but merely the lower-case individual, emptied of universal values. Most members of the ‘90s generation are value nihilists. When they proclaim the value of the self, that self is no more than a vessel filled with personal desires and individual will. In such a valueless world, what, alone, can be trusted? Only the choices made by one’s own will. Man is the measure of all things, only because his will constitutes the world and his choices provide the standard by which everything in it is measured. One might argue that “man is the measure of all things” asserts the subjectivity of the ego, yet this subject is far from a rational and enlightened being that turns its own reason to common use. [In reality], it happens all too often that the self is merely a subject of will and desire, from which all definite values have been stripped. Beyond the self and the physical world, there is no longer any god, absolute truth or transcendent being. The only reality is what the self wills—a will that is absolute. Such a subject requires neither justification nor reflection. It has neither a past nor a future, only the present.

When Hamlet asks himself, “To be or not to be—that is the question”, he is engaged in rational self-reflection. But a self which is so absolutist about the individual will has no need for reflection, because reflection presupposes definite values. The modern self merely amounts to an exercise of free will, but this free will, emptied of values, becomes no more than the will exercised by a hollow subject. Although “I want” appears to represent the individual will’s free choice, that will is governed by forces alien to the self—the opinions, fashions and trends generated by the market. The human will is just an empty vessel, filled with the dominant ideology of everyday life. Many young people born in the 1990s appear highly individualistic, but behind their wills stand the celebrities, idols and internet personalities whom they worship. The market’s invisible hand manipulates their wills and rules their very subjectivity.

Although the exceptional [佼佼者] among them may become self-aware philosophical Cynics [精神犬儒], Buddha-like youths with clearly defined values or even radically engaged advocates of resistance through lying flat, nevertheless, such active adherents remain a minority. Most belong to the third category of the passive lying flat adherents. Passively lying flat does not mean refusing to work altogether, living off one’s parents [啃老] or becoming a welfare-dependent shut-in [吃低保]. To the contrary, these people are more like the low-desire population [低欲望群体] of Japan. Having cut off their desire for upward mobility or to sell themselves to a 996 working regime, they still have jobs but no longer invest themselves in their work or make any great effort. Online, this form of lying flat has been compared to that of a sea spider. Sea spiders grow by feeding on waste from the seabed. Consisting of little more than legs and a head, they have virtually no flesh worth eating and are consequently quite safe within the food chain. Once you have made yourself useless, no one can exploit you—neither capital nor your friends. Lying flat thus offers the security of an impoverished existence.

The Zhuangzi recounts Hui Shi telling Zhuangzi of a foul-smelling ailanthus tree [臭椿树] in the forest. Its trunk was so swollen and its branches so crooked that woodcutters would not even glance at it. It was genuinely enormous but useless. Zhuangzi replied: why worry about whether it is useful? A useful tree would long ago have attracted attention and been cut down, bringing its life to a premature end. It is precisely because the tree is useless that it preserves its life and enjoys longevity. The security sought by passive adherents of lying flat is what Zhuangzi celebrated as “the usefulness of the useless” [“无用之用”].

Critics tell those who lie flat: “You may make it through the first of the month, but you won’t last until the fifteenth!” In fact, passive adherents are not spendthrifts who consume their entire salary and then have nothing left for their next meal. What they have chosen—or had thrust on them—is the fatalism of a low-desire existence, according very much with the post-materialist outlook of the 1990s generation. Their parents attached greater importance to wealth accumulation and the value of money, having grown up amid material scarcity and possessing an instinctive sense of insecurity. By contrast, this younger generation was born and raised amid material abundance and places less particular value on money and wealth. Urban middle-class children, especially, do not share that same anxiety about material deprivation. They still need material things, but these are no longer such a paramount objective in life. They are unwilling to demean themselves for “five pecks of rice” by adjusting to their boss’s whims or enduring their parents’ nagging.

What they want is personal freedom, to live spontaneously and according to their own inclinations. This is certainly not freedom as a legal right—the external freedom from coercion—but a typically Chinese concept of freedom: the spontaneity [率性] of the Zhuangzi. In the past, bosses fired their employees. Now, young employees frequently fire their bosses, resigning and walking off at the slightest disagreement [一言不合，便辞职走人]. Employers today complain that staff born in the 1990s are impossible to keep happy and that they must constantly adjust to their employees’ whims. This is characteristic of the “new human” of the post-materialist age. Even if resignation condemns them to a “lower stream” status, then so be it [也在所不惜].

The young person who passively lies flat has neither a past nor a future, only the present. A past entails accepting responsibility for one’s parents and family, while a future entails pursuing a succession of modest goals that lead step by step towards the socially expected life of buying a home, marrying and having children. The adherent of lying flat rejects all this, severing ties with both past and future. Only the present remains, together with the pursuit of spontaneity and freedom within it. To lie flat is to live spontaneously and be free. Yet lying flat also requires a renunciation of the life expected by society. Only after that renunciation can one lie down and enjoy a limited measure of spontaneity, though the price is considerable.

III. Social Dissatisfaction and Revolutionary Rupture

For passive adherents of lying flat, this choice is an inescapable form of resistance to the meritocracy that is mainstream in society today. Meritocracy can be translated into Chinese as “elitism” [精英主义] or “rule by the able” [贤能主义], but in the contemporary world it has acquired a new meaning as the combination of “IQ + perspiration”. It even offers an inspirational message: if you work hard, you are bound to succeed. Meritocracy presents the beautiful utopian prospect of a world of equal opportunity in which only the strivers can come out on top [爱拼才能赢]. The older generation lived through a period in which everyone received a share of the growing economic pie, and they consequently became true devotees of the meritocratic creed. Today’s world, however, has become a zero-sum game in which the success of a minority is accompanied by the failure of the majority. However intelligent you may be and however hard you work, you are not guaranteed the future you’d expect.

Michael Sandel, Harvard’s celebrity professor, calls this “the tyranny of merit”. In his view, a meritocracy founded on the survival of the fittest not only places the majority at an economic disadvantage but also deprives them of their social dignity as human beings. A profound sense of failure has convinced growing numbers of young people that effort is futile and that everything can only be blamed on personal fate or social injustice. One young professional born in the ‘90s angrily demanded online:

“I graduated from an elite Project 985 university [Note: a government programme launched in 1998 to develop a select group of universities into world-class institutions; replaced by Double First-Class Construction universities in 2017 under Xi Jinping but the term is still used to refer to China’s top universities.] and work 996 every day, but still cannot afford a home in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Why can an almost illiterate old man from an urban village [城中村] receive several flats after his home’s demolition and then earn more in monthly rent than I do from working? Isn’t the windfall he enjoys from the location itself a product of our efforts? Why is he entitled to sit back and live off the fat of the land [坐享其成] while I, however hard I work, have no prospect of buying a home?”

Such sentiments are extremely common online, leading me to observe a profound phenomenon: lying flat-ism is really a case of “while the body lies flat, the heart does not” [身躺心不平]. Their bodily repose is merely an illusion, while they are inwardly bursting with dissatisfaction and burning indignance [愤愤不平]. Unlike either the pseudo- or active adherents of lying flat, and still further unlike the Buddha-like youths, the passive adherents harbour deep within them an indefinable resentment. The targets of this resentment are: first, capital; second, elites; and third, the meritocratic system that compels them to struggle without respite. Within a section of society’s losers, a sense of hostility towards the rich and elites is pervasive online. The many descriptions of being “trapped in the system” [“困在系统”] similarly express intense dissatisfaction with meritocracy.

Even among undergraduates and postgraduates who have yet to enter the workplace, their intellectual interests have shifted alongside changes in society. Most of the postgraduates I supervise study Chinese intellectuals in the modern period. At the turn of the century, the dissertation topics they chose were generally abstract questions in intellectual history. About ten years ago, their attention began shifting towards social and cultural history, particularly power transitions [权势转移] and upward and downward social mobility. In recent years, many have become more interested in the pent-up torment [苦闷] and anxiety that inhabited the inner world of May Fourth youth [before 1949], examining how that anxiety developed into dissatisfaction and ultimately led them towards revolution. As it turns out, academic trends within the ivory tower can be intimately connected with social reality. The progression from abstract ideas to concrete questions of social mobility and finally to inner anxiety and dissatisfaction vividly reflects the evolution of young professionals’ social mentality over the past twenty years.

The resentment underlying “while the body lies flat, the heart does not” is a psychological phenomenon that deserves close attention. The German sociologist Max Scheler once made a particular study of what he termed ressentiment and argued that it was a product of modern democratic society. By “democratic society”, he meant, in Tocqueville’s sense, a modern society in which people can move freely between upper and lower strata, as opposed to the hierarchical society of medieval Europe. In medieval society, everyone occupied an assigned place and observed the duties of their station [各安其位，各守本分]. People harboured few excessive desires or ambitions, and the psychological soil in which such ressentiment grows was therefore largely absent.

In a modern democratic society, however, the ceiling separating the classes has been broken through. Work hard enough and you may rise above everyone else. Society consequently produces figures resembling Julien Sorel [Note: the social-climbing protagonist of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black]. Yet the pyramid to success remains the preserve of a minority. A mobile democratic society liberates the desires of the majority while giving them very little prospect of fulfilment. Hence, they accumulate all kinds of ressentiment: resentment of people from the same social stratum who have enjoyed greater luck, and resentment of the rich and powerful elites towering above them.

China’s historical tradition differs from Europe’s. As I have argued in The Pulse of China: Xu Jilin’s Fifty Lectures on Traditional Culture, China has since antiquity been a “mobile hierarchical society” [流动的等级社会]. [Note: Xu Jilin’s 2021 book has not been translated but an interview promoting the book has been translated at David Ownby’s Reading the China Dream.] Channels and space for free mobility have always existed between aristocrats and commoners and between the upper and lower reaches of society. Yet society has nevertheless remained strictly hierarchical, with superior and inferior status distributed according to power, wealth and culture. Feeling inferior before one’s betters and lording it over those below have produced a twisted social character, whereby each individual can only obtain greater social respect through a desperate struggle towards the top of the pyramid.

In the imperial examination system, the desire of the “country boar to snuffle up a fine cabbage” [“土猪拱白菜”] was everywhere. The objective was to squeeze into high society and win others’ respect. For most people, however, upward mobility remained hopeless no matter how hard they struggled. Ressentiment accumulated deep within them, day after day, until, at a certain point, it was transformed into a subversive and destructive energy: an “unorganised force” that challenged the established order. Organised forces are not frightening, because one can rationally bargain with them. However, an “unorganised force”, filled with ressentiment, possesses undeniably large destructive power—like a great flood, it is difficult to channel [如同大洪水一般，难以疏导]. This must be taken extremely seriously.

To treat the generation born in the ‘90s well is to treat China’s future well [善待90后，就是善待中国的未来]. What path should China take towards common prosperity? How can more of those who have chosen to lie flat recover their confidence and once again see reason for hope? These are grave questions that China must now confront in earnest.

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