The zeitgeist shift that first began about a decade ago in China now feels complete. Isolated grumblings from students and tech workers about impossible workloads have evolved into a widespread belief that in today’s China, hard work no longer pays off. A 2023 survey conducted by two American scholars of China, Scott Rozelle and Martin K. Whyte, found that for the first time since the survey started in 2004, respondents said that having connections and growing up in a rich family mattered more than personal ability when it came to getting wealthy in China.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this shift. Meritocracy was virtually a national religion during the decades of economic reform. The assumption that hard work paid just rewards was so intrinsic to the national psyche, so hammered in by parental instruction and patriotic fable, that it was rarely analyzed. Only as times began to change did the Chinese term for meritocracy, youji zhuyi, begin to circulate as people grappled with the loss of a condition that they had so long taken for granted.

The zeitgeist shift that first began about a decade ago in China now feels complete. Isolated grumblings from students and tech workers about impossible workloads have evolved into a widespread belief that in today’s China, hard work no longer pays off. A 2023 survey conducted by two American scholars of China, Scott Rozelle and Martin K. Whyte, found that for the first time since the survey started in 2004, respondents said that having connections and growing up in a rich family mattered more than personal ability when it came to getting wealthy in China.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this shift. Meritocracy was virtually a national religion during the decades of economic reform. The assumption that hard work paid just rewards was so intrinsic to the national psyche, so hammered in by parental instruction and patriotic fable, that it was rarely analyzed. Only as times began to change did the Chinese term for meritocracy, youji zhuyi, begin to circulate as people grappled with the loss of a condition that they had so long taken for granted.

This has often led people to a grim conclusion, the popular interpretation goes: Without the possibility of changing the rules of an unfair system, the only thing to do is give up—to “lie flat,” in Chinese parlance.

But this interpretation obscures another possibility: In a country that has raced through, in a decade or two, the social and economic changes that unfolded in other countries over half a century or more, a diminished collective appetite for conventional markers of success may well be the diversification of pursuits and values that happens organically in a maturing society.

Chinese often lamented that a herd mentality had dominated public thinking in the heyday of capitalist reform in the 1980s-2000s. Money and energy poured into one hot sector after another, creating bubbles in real estate, technology, and higher education that burst as the economy slowed. In their aftermath, many Chinese now find themselves confronted for the first time with a task more difficult than the rat race: figuring out what they actually want for themselves.

Part of that is deciding where to live. Gone are the days when coastal metropolises such as Shanghai and Shenzhen were the only destinations for young migrants looking to try their luck.

Today, a constellation of cities has become trendy among young people who pick homes based on more than the economic opportunities that they offer. Some flock to more exotic towns such as Kunming and Dali, on the Chinese equivalent of the hippie trail in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Others are drawn to the culturally inclusive Chengdu or the dramatic landscapes of Chongqing: inland metropolises that still offer better work-life balance than hectic megacities such as Beijing or Shanghai.

Some of this is necessity; young people are priced out of China’s “first-tier” cities, and state policies often lock new residents out of public services. Earlier generations of migrants put up with those obstacles as they toiled and scrimped to maximize savings. Today, many young people see them as an invitation to pursue alternatives.

Many are moving to smaller cities and towns, backwaters of only half a million people or so, whose names are unfamiliar to most Chinese. They offer anchors to many young people who had spent their childhoods moving from city to city, following their migrant parents.

This new open-mindedness extends to the choice of jobs, too. China has faced a glut of college graduates for more than a decade, and the problem is worsening by the year. That’s pushing even the college-educated to look twice at vocational schools, which are reporting increasing enrollment by degree-holders, leading some of them to set up special bachelor-to-technician tracks.

Blue-collar jobs are abundant—and often pay better than initial wages in white-collar work. But more than a few college graduates and former office workers who turned to those jobs have also found a sense of purpose in them. Some are developing a nascent working-class identity on the internet by documenting their work routines on short-form video platforms such as Douyin. These blue-collar influencers, some of them with millions of followers, are elevating the profiles of professions such as electricians or truck drivers that had traditionally been relegated to the background of urban life.

Something similar is happening in the countryside. Once synonymous with poverty and backwardness, farming is becoming hip thanks to the popularity of rural lifestyle influencers such as Li Ziqi and Dianxi Xiaoge. The rural life that they posted online—leisurely, serene, and replete with otherworldly sceneries—idealizes an often hardscrabble reality. Still, it has helped to turn farming into a desirable alternative to the desk-bound, drone-like existence to which the young generations are accustomed. Drawn by this vision, some 12 million young people have headed to the countryside to work the land or start small businesses.

Admittedly, the decisions to settle in small towns or take up blue-collar work are partially economic. Yet as more are embracing such choices and rewriting the public narratives around them, they are pushing back against the narrow and oppressive set of values that governed reform-era China, chief among them an obsession with wealth and status.

In the 2000s and 2010s, it was common to hear complaints that Chinese society had been taken over by unbridled consumerism. Its grip was so strong that people sometimes took extraordinary measures to lay their hands on coveted objects. Today, that urge is more muted. Conspicuous consumption has suffered in China in recent years, with sales of luxury goods plunging as much as 20 percent in 2024 alone. The decline is not just the result of the drawn-out economic slump or a long-running state campaign to curb corruption. Public sentiment is turning against the unabashed flaunting of wealth that marked the first wave of the Chinese wealthy and the influencers of the 2010s.

Now, instead of showing off Chanel shoulder bags or Hermès scarves online, China’s elite opt for more discreet fashion, lest they fall victim of the growing phenomenon of online “luxury shaming.” Ordinary consumers are learning to consume smartly and consciously. People increasingly say they look for “emotional value” in their purchases, and that means spending on leisure activities such as sports and traveling instead of material possessions. During the eight-day national holiday last October, many Chinese members of Generation Z packed tents and camping lanterns and fanned across the country, proudly showing off their frugal setups on social media.

A harsher eye on the wealthy also means a kinder eye for the unlucky or the poor. Chinese millennials like me grew up being told that failure to work hard in school would condemn us to becoming street sweepers or dishwashers. Well-off urbanites used to look down their noses at migrant workers and gripe about their lack of suzhi, or quality. Today, as people begin to grapple with the unfairness of life, those judgements have softened. The change is hastened by the increasing visibility of migrant workers in people’s lives: No longer just faceless migrants who toil on factory floors, they are now the delivery drivers who ferry people’s lunches or the home nurses who care for their aging parents.

This ubiquity of those workers has created a new sensibility around labor. It produced a push for dedicated break rooms and lunch areas for janitors last year, as well as a long-running campaign demanding food delivery platforms to improve the welfare of their employees. Despite often strict government censorship around these issues, the latter eventually helped stop some of the platforms’ controversial labor practices, such as long working hours and tight delivery deadlines, and ushered in an industry standard that has prompted some platforms to offer social security benefits to their full-time riders.

Meanwhile, cultural interests around gig workers are growing. They have spawned books and movies that offer nuanced portrayals of this group. In 2023, a memoir titled I Deliver Parcels in Beijing became a best-seller in China. Written by Hu Anyan, a 46-year-old migrant worker who bounced among odd jobs before becoming a delivery driver, the memoir chronicled his endless daily struggle navigating busy streets on a scooter and placating picky customers. Although most of Hu’s readers worked in offices, they could relate to his “skepticism toward entrepreneurship, the pursuit of success and wealth, and climbing the social mobility ladder,” Hu said in an interview.

Indeed, gig workers embody the universal struggle of urban Chinese workers: the feeling that they are at the mercy of institutional and structural forces beyond their control, be it algorithms, schools, industry competitions, or erratic state policies; everyone has to keep hustling just to stay in the same place while someone else reaps the gains from their labor. This feeling is reflected in the nicknames that white- and blue-collar workers alike give themselves, such as “chives” (cheap and can be harvested frequently) and “livestock” (fated to toil for life).

This is a depressing outlook, though not an unrealistic one. China’s social contract, in which people offer political obedience in exchange for economic mobility, has never been perfect. Barriers to advancement abounded even in the best of times; as the tide of rising prosperity receded, they are becoming more glaring. This bleak reality has created a shared feeling of entrapment in society that is helping to bring people from different walks of life together. It has taught the public to be kinder to the disadvantaged and more accepting of those who try to cope by adopting new values and making bold life choices.

This article is featured in the FP Weekend newsletter, a curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads that take a step back from the drumbeat of the news. Get the lineup directly every Saturday.

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This is an aspect of Chinese life that does not show up in economic statistics and news headlines: Despite the economic struggles, or perhaps because of them, in some ways, the country is becoming a gentler, more tolerant place. As self-defeating competition drags on, trapping everyone and producing fewer winners ever year, the pitiless individualism that had flourished in China in the years of economic reform slowly loosens its grip.

Instead, the stories of China since 2020 have been those of the collective: the pandemic, the housing downturn, the mass unemployment. The lessons people have learned from those events are humbling: Wealth can accumulate quickly and vanish just as fast; careers can soar and crash overnight; successes are built on talent and hard work, as well as lucky timing and favorable societal conditions.

Internalizing these lessons has led to a different kind of individualism. More people are letting go of society’s expectations and following their hearts when they can. As they recover from the toll of competition, they are better at recognizing it in others. Perhaps people have had time to think; for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic of China, society feels stagnant, not caught up in the chaos of politics or the exaltation of an economic boom. A government obsessed only with national strength may not care about this. But what the people come to believe will matter, for themselves and for each other.