A Right to Be Offline

At the national Two Sessions in 2024, Lü Guoquan, a member of the national political advisory body and head of the general office of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, submitted a proposal on protecting workers’ lixian xiuxi quan, the right to offline rest. He suggested bringing it into law.

The proposal defined it as “the right of workers, outside statutory or agreed working hours, to refuse work contact or work matters through digital tools.” In December 2024, Xinhua reported that experts were divided. Shen Jianfeng supported the idea. Lou Yu said that overtime already requires agreement by both sides, so a new right was not needed.

No Read Mark

In August 2025, WeChat’s official account answered a user question: why is there no “read” function? Its reason was that a “read” mark “would increase the psychological burden and social pressure on the person who receives the message.”

Read and Unread

DingTalk, Alibaba’s app for workplace messaging, launched its version 1.0 on January 16, 2015. Among its first features were a company directory, yidu weidu (“read and unread”), DING messages, company groups and free calls.

As its name says, yidu weidu marks each message as read or unread for the person who sent it.

Three Minutes to Reply

In March 2023, the business paper IT Times reported on the rules for customer service on Taobao. Taobao, it wrote, assesses its merchants’ customer service by a reply time of three minutes. A merchant that misses it loses points in the year-end review. The paper added that Taobao has not published an official response time for its own customer service.

The agents call customers qin (亲) or qinqin, “dear.” A typical line quoted in the report is: “Dear, we will handle it as soon as possible.”

Notices Before the Holiday

On June 30, 2026, People’s Daily published a commentary by Pan Jiangping of Huangping County in Guizhou. “Every holiday,” it said, citing media reports, “some grassroots officials fall into helplessness. Higher units send out notices in a rush before the holiday and require all kinds of materials to be reported on the first day after it ends.”

The author warned that rushed tasks before holidays, and orders forcing all staff to work overtime at their posts during them, wear down officials and drain their will to work.

Adjusted Days Off

On November 4, 2025, the General Office of the State Council announced the public holidays for 2026. The Spring Festival holiday runs from Sunday, February 15, to Monday, February 23, nine days in all. In return, Saturday, February 14, and Saturday, February 28, are working days.

The system is called tiaoxiu, adjusted rest. In 2026 it also turns Sunday, January 4, Saturday, May 9, Sunday, September 20, and Saturday, October 10, into working days.

Learn to Play the Piano

On March 13, 1949, Mao Zedong set out the working methods of Party committees. Point five reads: “Learn to ‘play the piano.’ In playing the piano all ten fingers move. It will not do for some to move and others not. But if all ten fingers press down at once, there is no tune.”

“The Party committee must keep a firm grasp on its central work,” he went on, “and at the same time carry out work in other fields around it. We now manage many fields. The work of every region, every army and every department must be attended to. We must not pay attention only to part of the problems and drop the rest.”

Other Tasks Assigned by the Leader

The general office of the General Affairs Department of Beijing Normal University published the duties for ten management positions, from news and publicity to finance to information systems. Each list ends with the same line: wancheng lingdao jiaoban de qita gongzuo, “complete other work assigned by the leader,” or a near variant.

Similar lines close many other Chinese job postings. The line names no task, so it covers any task that arrives.

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