EVENTS

Following China’s economic reforms in 1978, its social stability and public acceptance of rising inequality have rested on a powerful meritocratic bargain that academic achievement and relentless personal struggle will lead to upward mobility. In recent years, however, the emergence of tangping (躺平, or "lying flat"), a deliberate withdrawal from relentless overwork and competition, signals that this post-1978 promise is losing credibility among educated urban youth. Moving beyond existing interpretations that tangping is merely a workplace burnout or generational laziness, this ongoing study argues that the phenomenon reflects a rational reassessment of a faltering social contract. Tracing the evolution of Chinese youth subcultures from diàosī, sāng, and fóxì to tangping and bǎi làn, the presentation examines declining intergenerational mobility, higher education expansion, credential inflation, and urban housing unaffordability. It examines how structural bottlenecks, cemented by the hukou divide and family networks (guanxi), affect first-generation small-town graduates (xiaozhen zuotijia) relative to urban elites. Furthermore, it examines why the Chinese state escalated its response from moral condemnation in 2021 to administrative censorship in 2025 and national security warnings in April 2026. Ultimately, the study contends that when the youth withdraws from state-sanctioned struggle (fendou), it exposes a deeper legitimacy challenge within China’s contemporary developmental model.

Speaker

Prabir Kumar Talukdar holds a Master’s degree in East Asian Studies from the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi. His research interests include East Asian philosophy, comparative cultural traditions, society, religion, and lived practices, with expanding interests in East Asian security studies and geopolitics. He has contributed essays and photojournalistic work on politics, socio-cultural issues, and climate change to publications and platforms including The Hindu, The Assam Tribune, Frontline, NEZINE, and Sahapedia. His photojournalistic work has been exhibited internationally with Thomson Reuters and the Asia-Europe Foundation. He received a fully funded scholarship for a multimedia journalism workshop in Albania and represented India at the 9th World Urban Forum (UN-Habitat) in Kuala Lumpur in 2019.

Chair

Usha Chandran is Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Honorary Fellow, at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Chinese on Gender issues in China from JNU. Her major research interests include gender issues in China and comparison with India, interface between gender and language as well as popular culture, women’s subjectivity in literature, and exploring Sociological methodologies to study Chinese society. Her major publications include, Gender Discrimination at Work in Urban China (Routledge, 2025), an edited volume, Gender in Language and Expression (Routledge, forthcoming February 2027), and a co-edited volume, China’s Society and Culture: Studies and Reflections.

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