From 2010, according to the business site Huxiu, Huawei promoted a “strivers agreement.” Employees who signed it became fendouzhe, strivers. They gave up annual leave, marriage leave and other benefits, and in return could share in company stock.
In a later court case, Huawei submitted one employee’s pledge: “I voluntarily become a striver, and voluntarily give up paid annual leave and annual leave pay during my work at the company.”
吃苦耐劳 To eat bitterness and endure toil. To bear a hard life and stand up to heavy work.
任劳任怨 To take on toil and take on complaints. The Handian dictionary explains: to work without shirking hardship and without fearing the complaints of others. The phrase goes back to Han dynasty texts.
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.
The Three Character Classic, a traditional primer for children, holds up students who drove themselves. “One tied his hair to the beam. One jabbed his thigh with an awl. No one made them. They drove themselves to hard study.”
“One read by fireflies in a bag. One read by the light of snow. Their families were poor, but they never stopped learning.” The four students were Sun Jing, Su Qin, Che Yin and Sun Kang.
At Huawei, the mattress became a symbol. A company text from 2006, titled Heaven Rewards Diligence, describes the origin of Huawei’s chuangdian wenhua, mattress culture. In the words of the business site Jiemian, the mattress stands for “a culture of continuous striving.” Ren Zhengfei once said: “Huawei has no money. If people do not strive, it will collapse. We cannot pay anything for those who do not strive.”
In 2008, Ren played the symbol down. “The mattress is not a culture. Culture can be passed on. A mattress is only a tool for an afternoon nap.”
On April 17, 2021, a post titled Lying Flat Is Justice appeared on the forum Baidu Tieba, written by a user called “the good-hearted traveler.” Tangping, lying flat, came to mean withdrawing from fierce competition and no longer striving. It made the lists of the top words of 2021.
In May 2021, Southern Daily answered with a commentary titled “Lying Flat Is Shameful. Where Is the Justice in It?” Xinhua reprinted it.
没有功劳也有苦劳 Even without merit, there is hard toil.
吃得苦中苦，方为人上人 Only by eating the bitterest of bitterness can one rise above others.
In 1984, Hu Yaobang extended the first saying when he praised an old Red Army veteran: “If not merit, then toil. If not toil, then fatigue.”
Article 35 of the Civil Servant Law says that civil servants shall be assessed comprehensively on their 德、能、勤、绩、廉: virtue, ability, diligence, results and integrity. The emphasis is on political quality and actual work results.
Diligence is assessed as a criterion of its own, next to results.
On April 12, 2019, Jack Ma told an internal Alibaba event that being able to work “996,” from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, was “a huge blessing.” For companies like Alibaba, he said, it was a fubao (福报), a reward earned by good deeds.
Ma later wrote on Weibo that no company should or could force employees to work 996. In August 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Supreme People’s Court published model labor cases against unlawful overtime rules.
In March 1960, the oil driller Wang Jinxi led his team from Yumen to the new Daqing oilfield. They moved and installed the drilling rig by pulling with their hands and carrying on their shoulders. During a blowout, Wang jumped into the mud pit and stirred the mud with his body. He became known as the “Iron Man.”
At a rally on April 29, 1960, he shouted: “Better to live twenty years less, but we must take this great oilfield, whatever it costs.”