In March 2019, Chinese programmers started a project on GitHub called 996.ICU. Its slogan was gongzuo 996, shengbing ICU: “Work 996, get sick, end up in the ICU.” 996 means working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
Within weeks, the page had almost 200,000 stars. Its list of companies said to demand such hours had grown to 123.