Overworked Chinese workers have been making western consumers better off for more than two decades now. Chinese domestic consumption is very low even among developing countries, negligible compared to its gigantic export.
Upon joining WTO one prerequisite is 5 days-8 hours work week, while presently in China you often find 996 schedule instead, with factory workers even worse with 12 hour shifts and 2 days off a month.
It is simply sweatshop in the 21st century again, a hallmark of Neijuan.
I'm not saying workers aren't necessarily overworked etc. I'm just saying that's not what this word and concept is about. This concept is about capital owners.
It would hardly have become a popular slang term on the Chinese internet if it were only about the worries of a small minority of capital owners. Any kind of excessive competition dynamics may be described as neijuan. I would like to give you some social media usage examples, but Weibo is censoring the #内卷# hashtag. In any case, the Wikipedia article has examples involving students competing in exams and graduates competing on the job market, among others.
Like other comments on OP have pointed out, the term at this point is vague and used for various reasons.
But given the term's emergence in a country with a communist government, and the origin described by wikipedia, I think what I'm saying is more aligned with the term's origin.
Whatever the term means on Chinese internet sounds like standard (I'm sure partially valid) doomerism. I can accept they use it to describe that.
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Overworked Chinese workers have been making western consumers better off for more than two decades now. Chinese domestic consumption is very low even among developing countries, negligible compared to its gigantic export.
Upon joining WTO one prerequisite is 5 days-8 hours work week, while presently in China you often find 996 schedule instead, with factory workers even worse with 12 hour shifts and 2 days off a month.
It is simply sweatshop in the 21st century again, a hallmark of Neijuan.
I'm not saying workers aren't necessarily overworked etc. I'm just saying that's not what this word and concept is about. This concept is about capital owners.
It would hardly have become a popular slang term on the Chinese internet if it were only about the worries of a small minority of capital owners. Any kind of excessive competition dynamics may be described as neijuan. I would like to give you some social media usage examples, but Weibo is censoring the #内卷# hashtag. In any case, the Wikipedia article has examples involving students competing in exams and graduates competing on the job market, among others.
Like other comments on OP have pointed out, the term at this point is vague and used for various reasons.
But given the term's emergence in a country with a communist government, and the origin described by wikipedia, I think what I'm saying is more aligned with the term's origin.
Whatever the term means on Chinese internet sounds like standard (I'm sure partially valid) doomerism. I can accept they use it to describe that.