The Asian work ethic comes at a price; Modern Chinese are increasingly worried about being pushed too hard

March 4, 2014 3:54 pm

The Asian work ethic comes at a price

By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai

Modern Chinese are increasingly worried about being pushed too hard, writes Patti Waldmeir

China’s state media recently reported that 600,000 mainlanders die every year from working too hard. Taken at face value, that would mean that 600,000 people a year face the same fate as may have befallen Moritz Erhardt, the Bank of America intern whose death in London last summer – possibly caused by overwork – triggered an industry-wide crisis of conscience over whether western bankers need to be more slothful.

Could it be true that more than half a million people are being worked to death each year, in the service of Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream? Six hundred thousand is a lot of people to be keeling over in a single year – even in China, where statistics have to be pretty big to be important.

It might be wiser to think of it less of a statistic and more of a cri de coeur. No one knows what kinds of deaths are included in the 600,000, least of all the People’s Daily journalists who published it. But what is clear is that “occupational sudden death”, a term borrowed from the Japanese, has become a big social problem among China’s exhausted workforce. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported last year that almost 1,100 police officers had died of overwork in the previous five years – fully half of those who died in the line of duty. What they didn’t say is that a big part of the problem was being drunk in the line of duty. Alcohol seems to play a big part in many so-called overwork deaths, because many employees are expected to spend long hours entertaining clients or government officials, often lubricated by alcohol.

And it’s not just that the average wage slave is working so hard these days – slavery just isn’t paying off like it used to either. The average Chinese workaholic can pull as many all-nighters as he likes but it won’t get him a foot on even the lowest rungs of the property ladder in Shanghai or Beijing. His girlfriend won’t marry him until he can buy a flat, and even working around the clock won’t guarantee that. As China’s leaders meet this week in Beijing for sessions of the country’s mock legislature, they may not be counting the exact death toll from overwork – but they will be counting the political costs of a property market that makes a mockery of those who work for a living.

Indeed, modern urban Chinese seem to be increasingly worried about the price they pay for the Asian work ethic. According to a report published last week by Boston Consulting Group, half of those surveyed – from the middle to affluent classes – said they had health problems because of “work pressures, family obligations and long work hours”. Insomnia, fatigue, lack of energy, obesity, frequent illness; all the diseases familiar to any western workaholic – but not the kind of thing to worry anyone much in the first few decades after communism.

Information technology workers are apparently especially vulnerable: one recent survey of 350,000 IT workers found that 98.8 per cent of them said they had health problems. And it’s not just server slaves who are suffering. The recent death of Shinian Xueluo highlighted the problem of overwork fatalities among, of all things, online novelists. He died in June after writing 1.6m words of a novel he was rushing to complete in order to earn money to put his younger sister through school.

Wei Ziwei, 24, has to write 100,000 words a month as part of her contract as an online novelist. She says she would ideally prefer to write at midnight. But after hearing about many cases of novelists succumbing to overwork, Ms Wei changed her schedule to work only eight hours a day, during daytime – not counting mental health breaks to do housework.

Over the next few years, overwork will doubtless fall out of fashion in China, just as the urban birth rate has dropped (even in areas where couples are allowed to bear more than one child, they often do not want to), and China’s appetite for bling has abated – all natural casualties of rising prosperity.

Meanwhile, China’s insurance groups have stepped in to bridge the gap because sudden deaths from overwork are often excluded from accident insurance policies in China.

Worried workaholics can buy a “pressure as big as a mountain” insurance policy on Taobao, the Chinese version of eBay. For roughly $10 a year, those aged between 20 and 30 can get $80,000 in coverage against sudden death from overwork.

It’s cheap at the price – and a whole lot easier than learning how to enjoy a good day’s indolence.