Across East Asia, a growing number of young people are choosing not to participate in a hyper-competitive job market that generates diminishing returns. Instead of pursuing upward mobility through long working hours, they opt for reduced ambition and emotional self-protection. In China, this phenomenon is often described as tangping (lying flat). In Japan and South Korea, similar patterns appear under different labels. These terms all reflect comparable forms of youth disillusionment driven by stagnant wages, high housing costs, intense work cultures, and declining faith in meritocracy. East Asian governments respond to youth withdrawal in remarkably different ways, revealing contrasting models of governance. This article compares how China, Japan, and South Korea interpret and manage youth withdrawal and what these differences reveal about state-society relations in each country.
Key takeaways:
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Youth withdrawal is framed in different terms in China, Japan, and South Korea, but all reflect a low-aspiration rationality under structural constraint.
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Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean governments respond to youth withdrawl in distinctive ways: Chinese government treats youth withdrawal as ideological deviance, so it is moralized, politicized, and subjected to discursive discipline; Japanese government depoliticizes and accepts the productivity losses coming with these withdrawal as a post-growth reality; South Korean government neither moralizes nor normalizes the term, allowing dicussion but deliver only partial solutions.
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State responses to youth withdrawal expose the implicit social contract in each system: In China, the citizen is expected to be mobilizable, and withdrawal is treated as a moral and ideological disruption to the developmental momentum; In Japan, the citizen is managed within a post-growth equilibrium where disengagement can be tolerated and normalized; In South Korea, the citizen is expected to perform competitively, but also has more space to publicly name the system’s failures, though not necessarily to reshape them.
In China, tangping (lying flat), bailan (let it rot), and foxi (buddha-like) are often used interchangeably to describe youth withdrawing from the hyper-competitive modernity. But on closer inspection, they have slightly different meanings. “Lying flat” emphasizes the rejection of intense societal pressures reflected in, for example, the “996” work culture—9 am to 9 pm, 6 days per week. “Let it rot” emphasizes the acceptance and even embrace of a deteriorating situation, where one knows one cannot achieve much but just let it be. “Buddha-like,” as its name indicates, focuses on the tranquil, apathetic mindset one can cultivate by adopting a low-desire, minimalist lifestyle and rejecting the over-ambitious, over-achieving culture.
Despite these differences, they all reflect a low-aspiration rationality under structural constraint, so the Chinese government views them as a threat to the civic virtue of striving and contribution, which could potentially harm the “China Dream.” Lying flat, due to its outstanding symbolic power (a horizontal body as an easily readable posture resisting the upward momentum), was particularly popular in China, and this popularity quickly made it a politically sensitive term.
Chinese authorities interpreted lying flat as a moral and ideological threat and framed it as irresponsible, shameful, and socially harmful. State responses included media campaigns criticizing lying-flat attitudes, algorithmic suppression of related online content, and reframing “proper” youth values around diligence and contribution. In this sense, China treats lying flat as ideological deviance. Youth withdrawal is moralized, politicized, and subjected to discursive discipline. The state seeks to restore productivity mainly by reasserting moral obligation.
Japan presents a striking contrast. Youth disengagement has existed for decades, appearing in forms such as freeters, young people who lack full-time, permanent employment; hikikomori, individuals who perform severe social withdrawal, such as isolating themselves at home for six months or more; and Satori Generation, disillusioned young people rejecting traditional material desires, consumerism, and career ambition. Unlike in China, these patterns are not politicized through official discourse.
Even though, on the individual level, some extreme cases of hikikomori are treated as parental failures, these moralized discourses are rarely endorsed on the state level. The Japanese government mainly addresses hikikomori as mental health issues, setting local support centers to provide critical mental health help to these young people. Despite the governmental support for extreme cases of isolation, a recent report shows that the youth isolation remains and even escalates after COVID. Such a failure could be traced to the crisis’s clear economic drivers: a slowing economy that could not offer enough job openings for the young population.
Due to these partial and limited policy solutions, youth social withdrawal in today’s Japan remains severe, yet it is depoliticized and absorbed into everyday social reality. Productivity losses come with these withdrawals, which are acknowledged but not dramatized. Thus, Japan serves as a model in which the state lowers expectations rather than attempting to remobilize society through moral pressure.
In South Korea, youth withdrawal is openly discussed and widely recognized, often labeled as the Sampo (“three-give-up”) Generation—abandonment of dating, marriage, and parenthood. Later on, terms like Opo (“five-give-up”), Chilpo (“seven-give-up”), and Gupo (“nine-give-up”) generations also appeared, adding abandonment of homeownership, interpersonal relations, employment, hope, health, and personal appearance to the list.
In terms of government response, South Korea occupies a middle position between China and Japan. Unlike China, South Korea does not moralize these behaviors. Unlike Japan, it does not fully normalize its social consequences. Instead, the government acknowledges that the youth disengagement is a social crisis linked to housing affordability, education inflation, and labor-market dualization. Public debate frequently acknowledges structural barriers, and governments have introduced targeted policies helping reclusive youth. A 2025 report highlights that Seoul and other local governments have funded support centres for socially withdrawn youth, aiming to help them reconnect with society through structured programs and reintegration support. In September 2025, the South Korean government said it would expand youth support measures to all young people, a move seen as acknowledging broader issues such as prolonged unemployment.
However, these measures remain insufficient so far, failing to address structural issues. South Korea’s response thus recognizes the problem without fully resolving it, producing a persistent tension between diagnosis and delivery.
Taiwan, another significant player in the region, exhibits similar patterns in youth withdrawal. For example, a report shows that more than 70% Taiwanese believe that the employment environment is unfriendly to young people. Meanwhile, inflation, low wages, and the gap between education and industry are major challenges the younger generation faces. Therefore, the phenomenon of youth withdrawal is equally widespread in Taiwan. Similar to Japan and Korea, youth withdrawal is not framed in a morally charged discourse by the Taiwanese government. Instead, government responses have focused on technocratic tools such as housing subsidies and employment incentives. Yet, due to the limitations of the solutions offered, the shadow of youth withdrawal still lingers on the island.
Comparing youth withdrawal cultures across East Asia shows that this phenomenon is widespread and that it is not an easy issue to tackle for policymakers. Where states respond with moralization, as in China, they risk alienating young citizens. Where withdrawal is normalized, as in Japan, stagnation is persistent and worsens. Where crises are acknowledged but incompletely addressed, as in South Korea, frustration continuously accumulates.
What these differences reveal about state-society relations
The distinctive responses to youth withdrawal in China, Japan, and South Korea are not just policy choices. They reflect patterns in how each state relates to society and what kinds of “citizenhood” are implicitly expected.
China’s sharp reaction to lying flat reveals a state-society relationship built on mobilization and moral obligation. In this model, the ideal citizen is not only law-abiding but also energetically productive: working hard, improving the self, and aligning personal life trajectories with national goals (development, stability, rejuvenation, and increasingly, demographic recovery).
When the state frames withdrawal as a “shameful” behavior, it effectively asserts that the problem lies in values rather than in structures. Withdrawal is treated as an ideological breach rather than simply a social outcome. The response is therefore mainly about fixing the youth behavior, rather than tackling its causes. In state-society terms, this represents a typical authoritarian model in which the state plays a strong role in shaping citizens’ ethics.
Japan’s relatively muted response suggests a different state-society arrangement: one that has gradually shifted toward post-growth acceptance and accommodation. Japan’s case suggests that when the state does not insist on high-intensity mobilization, withdrawal is treated as one more feature of a stable, if not stagnant, social order. This reflects a state-society relationship in which legitimacy is typically maintained through administrative management rather than moral campaigns. When problems rise, the state’s response tends to be technocratic: manage labor-market mismatch, mitigate extreme isolation, encourage incremental reform. The problem is not solved, nor is it moralized or dramatized.
South Korea’s response reveals a third pattern: a state-society relationship characterized by high performance expectations but also greater openness to public contestation. Youth withdrawal is widely discussed, labeled, and debated, often in explicitly structural terms, such as housing costs, education inflation, labor-market dualization, and intergenerational inequality. This reflects a democratic political environment in which grievances can be articulated and circulated, but change cannot be easily achieved. The result is a pattern of high visibility, partial response, and recurring frustration.
Conclusion
Youth withdrawal functions less as open resistance than as a quiet diagnosis of systems that no longer deliver on their promises. China, Japan, and South Korea demonstrate three distinct governance responses, but none offer a perfect solution. But together, they remind us that youth disengagement is not merely a cultural trend; it is a mirror reflecting the limits of contemporary governance in post-growth societies.
The above analysis shows that, if young people increasingly feel that their effort will not translate into upward mobility, disengagement becomes a rational adaptation rather than a moral or mental failure. Addressing this requires more than rhetorical appeals, mental health interventions, or narrowly targeted subsidies and incentives. It requires recalibrating the structural conditions: reducing housing precarity, reforming labor markets, moderating educational competition, and restoring pathways to upward mobility. These are not short-term fixes but long-term institutional projects that demand policy coherence across sectors and administrations. Without such structural recalibration, governments may manage the symptoms of youth withdrawal in a short while, but they are unlikely to reverse its underlying logic in the long run.
This work was supported from OP JAC Project “MSCA Fellowships at Palacký University III.” CZ.02.01.01/00/22_010/0008685, run at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic.
