Every year on March 15, World Consumer Rights Day, China’s state television normally broadcasts an evening gala that exposes companies for violating consumer rights. The first was broadcast on CCTV on the evening of March 15, 1991. In 2020, the pandemic pushed it back to July.
In 2014, the gala exposed a Hangzhou trading company for selling expired imported food ingredients, and debris problems in the shutter of Nikon’s D600 camera.
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.