“Involuted” Chinese society
People often ask me: after two years in Nairobi and now studying in Europe, do you plan to return to work in China?
I always answer instinctively, no, I don’t want to return to China. In my future plan, I can see myself settling down in any corner of the world (as long as there is internet?) but I do not want to go back to my home country to settle.
But I have always been unable to tell why I instinctively reject life back home. There are many miscellaneous reasons. You can’t get on Google in China, and need to use VPN to watch Netflix. There are too little green and walking space in big cities. Conversations with my colleague friends shifted from all about graduate entrance exam to marriage and real estate morgage. The traffic is also too congested: it takes two hours to get from Beijing East Third Ring Road to West Fifth Ring Road.
But only until yesterday, I read an article about “involution — 内卷” and suddenly felt a sense of enlightenment.
What is involution? This term is getting so popular in China. People use it in all different kinds of context casually. Although I have a vague idea of its usage, I have never really studied the exact meaning, and the evolution, of this word.
In this article (专访｜人类学家项飙谈内卷：一种不允许失败和退出的竞争), an anthropologist Xiang Sa explained the origin and gradual semantic shift of “involution” in Chinese media context. The concept came from anthropology and economics, describing a culture that cannot (or does not) adapt and or expand its economy, but continues to develop only in the direction of internal complexity and inefficiency.
For example, agricultural practices may advance so much in a farming society, but it is never able to enter an industrial society. Accumulation of quantitative change does not lead to qualitative changes.
However, today in China the word involution has been given a new meaning. The term “too involuted” can be used in any of these sentences:
- University life is so “involuted”. All students compete tireless for higher GPAs without really focusing on real content of the knowledge…
- Tech company work life is so “involuted”. All colleagues work from 9am to 9pm for 6 days a week (so-called 996) and even competing for longer and longer overtime…
- Middle-aged men life is so “involuted”. Men needs to keep upgrading their watches, cars and houses just because of vanity…
- Full-time housewife life is so “involuted”. Mothers are expected to be perfect “tiger mum” and secure the best education resources for the kid…
At its root, it is a description of such a phenomenon: A highly homogeneous and competitive society without an alternative exit option.
It is a race where everyone competes on the same track.
Everyone want to work for Tencent or Tiktok. Everyone want to get married before 27 and have children before 30. Everyone want to buy a house in 北上广深 Bei(jing) Shang (hai) Guang (zhou) Shen (zhen). Everyone tries to squeeze in the same running track and compete against each other.
And there is no exit mechanism. It is a competition that you cannot simply say “ I quit”
The “exit” here does not mean “failure”. To exit is just to say, “I do not want to compete with you on this track anymore. I have the choice to change to another track, change to another sport stadium, or maybe I just want to take a leisure walk on the nearby grass field.”
In the current Chinese society, the problem is not the lack of “alternative tracks”, but the unawareness or unwillingness to acknowledge any other alternative choices other than the mainstream path.
People who choose or are forced to exit can not face their parents, family, relatives and friends, or even do not have the face to attend university reunions.
An example was mentioned in the aforementioned article.
A Chinese university graduate student went to interview for McDonald’s. The McDonald’s recruiter read his resume, saw that he has graduate education background, and asked him: “Have you considered about your parents’ feelings?”
This sentence is a very heavy judgement. “Exiting” is no longer a personal choice, but is given a moral judgment. You should feel guilty. You should feel sorry for wasting the cultivation of parents and not living up to the “expectation” of society. You are not worth existing.
A few weeks ago, a graduate student in Dalian committed suicide. He left a suicide note on Weibo. I read the suicide note. Under the humorous tone, deeply rooted is the deep depression and pessimism. Throughout the note, the student did not blame his professor, his school or his lab. He said that he committed suicide because he was unable to produce consistent lab results and could not finish his graduate paper in order to graduate.
I wonder, the second before he committed suicide, did he ever think about, “instead of death, what if I just quit and do something else”?
But it is not possible. Not because other jobs or life paths don’t exist. But because if he drops out of school, and becomes a food delivery rider, or applies for a job at McDonald’s, or starts his career as an internet influencer, he will need to face judgement from his friends, family and the whole society.
The judgement is just too heavy. So he would rather die than “exit”.
A few weeks ago, I had a catch-up phone call with my friends from university. One good friend of mine had n a Hong Kong law firm for several years.
As you may have heard of , lifestyle of law firms is much worse than that of investment banks and consulting companies. 15 hours a day, 7 days a week — it becomes a heavy toll for her not only physically but mentally.
At the beginning of this year, she decided to quit her job, without securing or even any ideas of the next job (in Chinese it is called ‘naked-resign 裸辞’ ）. After resignation, she spent most of the time staying at home. We asked her how it feels to stay at home and what do we plan to do next?
Two things that she said deeply shocked me.
The first sentence she said was: “I have a lot of friends from my previous law firm who simply don’t believe that I ‘resigned nakedly’. They all firmly believe that I have been secretly interviewing for other jobs and have already got many offers before I quit. In our line of work, no one would ever imagine resignation without plans.”
The second sentence she said was: “I still don’t know what to do next. I have been looking at some recruitment opportunities recently. But it seems like a repetition of the old life again. All positions that headhunters recommended to me are still law firms. I have interviewed with a couple but I don’t know if I want to go. Why do I quit my job and in the end still return to my old path? But I don’t know what else I can do.”
We advised her to maybe consider corporate legal counsel at a Chinese state-owned enterprise where life is easier, or simply change to a new field of interest and start from scratch.
She said: “But it just wouldn’t work. I have studied in the United States for so many years. I studied US laws and all my experience is in the field of mergers and acquisitions. If I change a line of work, I would have to re-take law exams and waste so many years of study and and work experience.”
I totally understand her. Sometimes, the sunk cost is just so significant that one cannot ignore it as a rational person should do. The sunk cost keeps pushing you to keep going on the same direction. It creates such high inertia that does not allow you to turn around, not allow you to slightly shift direction, or even does not allow you to take a short pause and rest. You just have to run, run, and run, on the same direction.
About three years ago, I had been working at McKinsey for 2 years and I wanted to take up a 1-year secondment opportunity at the Gates Foundation in Beijing.
McKinsey, like many other professional services (such as law firms, accounting firms), has a relatively clear, linear and transparent career ladder. 3 years of Business Analyst, 2 years of Associate, 3 years of Engagement Manager. After that, according to performance, one can be promoted to a partner in about 5 to 7 years.
I remember the feedbacks from colleagues before I made the decision whether to do the 1-year secondment outside of McKinsey:
“The secondment opportunity is good, but you will have to do it for a whole year. Your tenure at McKinsey will stop during the secondment. ”
“This means that after you return to McKinsey, your tenure will be the second year Business Analyst, and you will have to struggle for another year to become an Associate.”
“You will be one year slower than others.”
“Have you considered discussing with the Gates Foundation to do a half-year secondment instead of a whole year?”
These suggestions are of course very candid and useful, especially for the participants competing on the McKinsey track: a straightforward, linear, clear track. To be faster than others, you just to follow the shortest straight line between two dots.
As a result, I did work in the Foundation for a year, then moved to Kenya for two years and now studying at SciencesPo for a master degree.
I know by the time I finish my master degree, my friends at McKinsey from the same cohort will have been promoted to engagement managers or even associate partners. But anyway, I have been on this detour for too long and too far.
A life full of twists and turns is definitely slower. But the point is, is life really a competition with a clear finish line, where everyone squeezes in the track without exit mechanism?
