'Garbage time': China’s slump spins out new meme of economic despair
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[July 17, 2024] By
Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s sputtering economy has prompted a dire, new
shorthand online for pessimism about the prospects for any turnaround
for jobs, incomes and opportunity: “the garbage time of history.”
The apparently made-in-China phrase injects a term from basketball – the
ragged final minutes of a game when the outcome is no longer in doubt –
into what started as a discussion of history and has since become a
heavily censored online discussion about whether China’s workers and
investors should give up.
China’s recent economic data have shaken confidence. Growth in the past
quarter fell short of forecasts at 4.7%, highlighting the drag from a
protracted property crisis and stalled consumer spending.
China’s Communist Party leadership concludes a closed-door meeting on
Thursday expected to detail Beijing’s economic strategy for the next
several years, including steps to promote technology. China Daily, in a
front-page story on Wednesday, described one aim of the meeting as
reviving confidence in the country’s “long-term economic trajectory.“
The fatalistic tag “garbage time” began popping up on social media
platforms over the past month. It was given a more recent boost when
state media and commentators lined up to denounce the phrase and any
suggestion that decline would follow downturn for China.
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“This is a catchphrase insinuating that there’s no help and no hope,
denying and downplaying everything in China,” Beijing Daily said in a
commentary last week.
It follows another buzzword China’s censors have targeted as a threat to
stability since it broke into the mainstream three years ago: “lying
flat,” a call to a slacker life of limited ambition and quiet protest.
Wang Wen, a finance professor at Renmin University and former columnist
for the state-controlled Global Times, said earlier this month the idea
of an era of garbage time was “more dangerous” because of its implicit
message of hopelessness.
“It completely denies China’s current development situation and attempts
to create public expectation that the country will eventually fail.”
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People walk past a construction site in Beijing's Central Business
District (CBD), China July 14, 2024. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo
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The first apparent mention of the term on China’s internet came last
September from Hu Wenhui, an editor at a small publication in
Guangzhou. In an article that has been since censored, Hu argued
that the history of the Soviet Union after 1979 and some Chinese
dynasties suggest that some historical failures are inevitable, a
comment some read as an implicit comment on current events.
“When the overall situation is set and defeat is inevitable no
matter how hard you try, it’s just a futile struggle,” Hu said. “How
should those unfortunate enough to encounter the garbage time of
history conduct themselves?”
Hu could not be reached for comment.
In June, the topic appeared to get a boost in online discussions.
Some on social media platform Weibo said in comments still visible
this week that the idea had struck a chord with some ordinary
people. “There are quite a few people who begin to feel that as long
as they can’t change anything, this is history’s garbage time,” one
said.
There are other signs China’s collective confidence has suffered,
according to survey data collected by Stanford University professor
Scott Rozelle and others published in summary last week by the U.S.
think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Rozelle found Chinese respondents to a survey were more pessimistic
than they had been two decades ago, more likely to blame structural
factors for determining whether a person is rich or poor and far
less likely to believe hard work pays off.
In 2004, 62% agreed “in our country, effort is always rewarded."
That dropped to 28% in the 2023 survey.
(Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Kim Coghill)
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