996/007 How Chinese Young People Work Nowadays?

We’ll first need to introduce the second largest e-commerce platform in China, called Pinduoduo. Weird name I know, so let us just call it Pin. Now, Pin was founded in September 2015, and is currently listed on Nasdaq. It has over 600 million active buyers, second only to Taobao. Unlike Taobao's shopping model however, Pin is a social e-commerce company that allows users to purchase goods at a lower price through group buying, as their slogan says: “Together, more savings, more fun”. The establishment relies to some extent on the low price appeal of cheap copycat products, and has therefore been subject to criticism for quite some time.
Recently, there’s been even more news surrounding the company. That is, a 22-year-old employee of Pin who was leaving work in the early morning of December 29th suddenly collapsed and died on her way home. On the evening of January 9th, Pin also reported a case of an employee committing suicide by jumping off a building at his home in Changsha.
Furthermore, on January 11th, an employee who was fired by Pin posted a video on Weibo with a photo of an ambulance picking up an employee from the company, who had apparently fainted at work. The caption of the photo says “the second Pinduoduo warrior has fallen”.
In fact, overworking in China has long been known. Even many years ago, more and more companies were pursuing the so-called "wolf culture". Social media revealed that another tech company, Kuaishou, and Tiktok’s parent company Bytedance, have also adopted the bi-weekly rotation model; the company Didi have also started a so called 10127 work model, which essentially means employees should “forever be at work”; meanwhile, some Alibaba employees also said they can't stand working overtime continuously and are ready to quit. It seems that the 996 and bi-weekly model have become the new standard for Chinese working hours.
A survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that the average leisure time of Chinese people in 2017 was only 2.27 hours per day, less than half of that in the United States and Germany, meanwhile, the average weekly working hours of internet product operation positions is 47.9 hours, while the average weekly working hours of programmers is 47.5 hours, far exceeding the statutory working hours. In addition, the paid annual leave system has not been implemented in China yet.
This is not only due to the lack of government regulation, but also due to the fact that China’s enormous population causes a shortage in job opportunities, together with the fact that China’s economy is in a terrible position, it makes competition extremely fierce. Those young people who have just graduated university are faced with a huge amount of pressure from the real world, and it’s difficult to simply keep themselves afloat. In order to survive in this cruel society, they are forced to choose between either putting up with these conditions, or starve.
So that’s the type of dilemma that people in China, especially younger people, are facing today. And they’re powerless to do anything about it. But that’s it for this video. Thank you for watching, make sure you like and subscribe, and I’ll see you next time.

#Chinaeconomy #Pinduoduo#Alibaba #Nasdaq
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Видео 996/007 How Chinese Young People Work Nowadays? канала China Observer