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Chinese censorship is often chalked up to being anything directly against the government or mentioning the Taiwan or Hong Kong situation. However, the posts from this movement were also censored. Posts from this movement were quick to be censored as it went against the promotion of the economic growth of China and threatens the already slowing birth rate.

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China is facing a shrinking labor force and younger people are being forced to work longer hours in order to compensate for the decrease in numbers to keep up the same amount of productivity. With this increasing pressure, a ‘lying flat’ movement has taken root in the youth culture that is not necessarily anti-work, but against the pressure-filled work environment, as well as social expectation.

The first time 'lying flat' appeared was in 2016 with this Weibo post. Weibo is a social media platform similar to Twitter that often hosts controversial discussion that later gets censored. At the time, this post didn’t seem to be a cause for concern.

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In April 2019, Jack Ma, then executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a technology conglomerate, gave a speech about the 996 and "wolf culture" being the path to success. 996 is a concept in which people work from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week.

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The promotion of the 996 work week is believed to be one of the direct causes of the 'lying flat' movement, as youth culture shifted to reject the 996 work week. This 996 culture was originally limited to the technology sector but has become a widespread practice. This culture has led to burnout and affected the mental health of many.

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In conjunction with this speech, workers in the technology sector in China set up a GitHub Repository called 996.ICU. The name 996.ICU refers to "Work by '996', sick in ICU", an ironic saying among Chinese developers, which means that by following the "996" work schedule, you are risking yourself getting into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).

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The first post to pick up momentum was posted on April 17th, 2021 by Luo Huazhong on Weibo. His post was titled "Lying flat is justice" that contained a text detailing his life of 2 years with no job and occasionally picking up work as a dead body extra in movies in Zhejiang province, accompanied by a picture of him lying down in a scene.

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In early May 2021, Luo's post began to pick up momentum and many other Chinese netizens began to write their own posts.

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In addition, images began to circulate about the movement, as it cemented itself into the cultural vocabulary of the Chinese internet.

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On May 20, 2021, Luo's post along with others' mentioning 'lying flat' are removed by censors. As a niche habit, the Chinese government was inclined to let a minor percentage of the population continue this way. However, after these posts gained popularity online, the government acted swiftly to silence them.

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While these posts are starting to be banned, state media outlets begin condemning 'lying flat' in articles and videos. This lifestyle was incompatible with the goals the Chinese government has set for its citizens, such as getting a college degree, a good job, buying a car and a house, getting married, and having children. Breaking this cycle threatens to cripple the Chinese economy.

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August 17, 2021: Xi Jinping gives a speech on “common prosperity”, which is a way of making sure that all citizens achieve together, mentioning those that are 'lying flat' need to get up and work. In this speech, Xi also condemned ‘lying flat’ and ‘involution’, two ends of a spectrum of not working hard enough and working too hard. Despite criticizing both of these lifestyles, only ‘lying flat’ continued to be censored.

Western media was slow to put any focus on each point of this movement. This is most likely caused by the West not identifying this movement as something anti-government, like what typical news stories cover when talking about Chinese censorship.

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The Economist was the first to pick up news about the 996 working environment and report extensively on the workers’ conditions.

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Then, many outlets spent time covering Jack Ma’s influence on this 996 culture and the importance of working hard.

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Later, Western media outlets began to look at the actual ‘lying flat’ movement typically by interviewing individuals. These articles focused mainly on the choices of the individual that lead to them choosing this lifestyle rather than the cultural change that was happening in China as a whole.

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As a trend was drawn, Western media began looking at the movement as directly anti-government because of working standards, finding a story that was palatable for a Western audience. This may be because the United States was going through its own form of this movement with the Great Resignation during the pandemic. Instead of censoring the topic, the US government and news outlets shied away from talking about it.

In March 2022, Shanghai began going into a lockdown, after 2 years of a successful COVID-19 response, keeping both the original strain, the Delta variant, and the recent Omicron variant mostly at bay. The government officially effectively locked down the whole city on April 1, starting with a promise that each side of the city would only be locked down for 4 days each. However, the city continued to be locked down past the initial four days, into mid-May. During this time, the idea of lying flat once again entered the Chinese internet culture mainstream.

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‘Lying flat’ was once again mobilized, but this time to talk about dealing with the COVID-19 situation in China. Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has been using a strict zero-covid policy to prevent the spread of the virus. However, many have called for this policy to be adapted, now that the effects of the virus are less severe and pose less of a risk for the majority of the population. One such change to this zero-covid policy is ‘lying flat’, or allowing COVID-19 to infect the population to create herd immunity and people can go back to living their normal lives.

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Top epidemiologists and netizens alike are calling for the end of these draconian measures of the current zero-covid policy for preventing the spread of disease, because while the policy has been able to prevent deaths from covid itself, the side effects of deaths related to the two-month-long lockdown situation have been numerous.