Opinion | How China’s internet giants have failed the country’s youth
- China’s shiniest tech companies could use some soul-searching on the welfare of their young employees
- Healthy and dignified workers are key to the healthy and sustainable development of China’s tech sector
2020 was not an easy year for Chinese tech companies: many came under scrutiny and received queries from market investors and government officials. Yet these internet giants’ difficulties hardly matched those faced by some of their employees.
The tragic deaths of white- and blue-collar tech workers alike triggered scathing questions on the labour conditions in some of China’s most well-known tech behemoths.
Almost two years after the launch of “996 ICU”, an online campaign protesting the overwork culture in China’s Big Tech, the situation seems to have only got worse.
The declining welfare of workers has its roots in drastic changes taking place in China’s tech scene: the golden era when internet platforms could easily gain millions of new users overnight has passed.
Over the past two decades, the arrival of over a billion new mobile internet users allowed China’s Big Tech to grow and thrive, as government regulations freed them from foreign competition. However, years of freewheeling development has also given birth to a new kind of work value: the pursuit of sustained growth at all cost.
