The Great Unraveling: How China's Young Men Are Waking Up—and Opting Out

BEIJING — The term lasted barely a week on Chinese social media before vanishing from every major platform. "Ligong thinking"(力工思维)—a phrase describing the mindset that life's sole purpose is to work, save, marry, and reproduce—had struck too close to home.

The rapid, total censorship revealed what Beijing fears most: not just that millions of young Chinese men are abandoning the traditional path, but that they're beginning to understand why.

"I watched my father sacrifice everything—his health, his dreams, his savings—to buy our apartment and get me through school," says Zhang Wei (a nickname), a 28-year-old software engineer in Shenzhen who has no plans to marry. "He followed all the rules. Now he's 55, exhausted, and I'm supposed to do the same thing? For what?"

Zhang represents a growing cohort of Chinese men experiencing what researchers and online communities are calling an "awakening"—not a progressive social movement, but a bitter realization that the prescribed path of obedience and sacrifice no longer delivers security, respect, or family stability.

The consequences are measurable and accelerating. Marriage registrations plummeted to 6.1 million in 2024, down nearly 20% from 2023 and the lowest figure since the 1980s. China's population shrank by 1.39 million last year. The fertility rate has collapsed to approximately 1.10 children per woman—far below the 2.1 needed for replacement and among the lowest in the world.

These aren't just statistics. They represent a fundamental breakdown in the social contract that has underpinned Chinese society for generations.

Ligong Thining (Generated using Nanobanana)

The Path That No Longer Works

"Ligong" literally means "manual laborer," but "ligong thinking" describes something broader: a mechanistic mindset that reduces life to a checklist imposed from above. Work hard. Save money. Pay the bride price. Buy the apartment. Have the child. Never question whether this path serves you or whether it's even achievable anymore.

The extreme version, dubbed "ligong all-in," describes men who pour their entire savings and their parents' retirement funds into marriage expenses—bride prices that can reach 200,000 to 500,000 yuan in rural areas, plus an apartment that might cost 50 times the average worker's annual salary in major cities—only to face divorce, debt, or the realization that happiness never arrived.

"The term disappeared online, but the reality it describes is everywhere," says Li Ming (a nickname), a 32-year-old factory manager in Dongguan who called off his engagement last year. "My parents saved for 15 years to help me. Her family wanted a bigger apartment, a car, and 300,000 yuan in cash. I did the math—I'd be in debt until I'm 50. And for what? So she could divorce me in five years and I'd still owe everything?"

The bitterness in Li's voice reflects a broader male disillusionment spreading across Chinese social media before censors can scrub it away. Online forums devoted to "anti-marriage" thinking and "lying flat" (refusing to participate in China's competitive rat race) attract millions of followers before disappearing.

But this isn't simply about men rejecting marriage. It's about an entire generation questioning whether blind obedience to societal expectations—what the censored discourse termed "ligong thinking"—has become a trap.

A System-Wide Pattern

The concept's threat to authorities lies in its scalability. "Ligong thinking" doesn't just describe struggling workers—it illuminates a pattern across Chinese society.

Local officials obsessing over GDP targets, building ghost cities and infrastructure nobody needs: ligong thinking.

Students grinding through endless test preparation, competing for scarce university spots and jobs, without space for creativity or joy: ligong thinking.

Bosses expanding businesses mechanically without questioning profitability or purpose: ligong thinking.

Parents pushing children through the same narrow path regardless of aptitude or happiness: ligong thinking.

"The genius of the term was that it made people across all social classes ask the same question," explains Wang Jing (a nickname), a former sociology lecturer who now works in the private sector after her research on gender and labor was deemed too sensitive. "Am I trapped in ligong thinking? Who set this path for me? What happens if I step off?"

Those questions, Wang notes, inevitably lead to examining the Party-state model itself—which demands conformity, measures success through narrow metrics, and offers little room for individual exploration or security outside prescribed channels.

Hence the ban.

The Gender War Nobody Can Solve

The collapse of "ligong thinking" is occurring against a backdrop of escalating gender conflict that censorship cannot contain.

Many young Chinese men view women as complicit in an exploitative marriage market, demanding impossible bride prices and housing while offering little security in return. Many young Chinese women view men as either patriarchal throwbacks or economic dead-ends, unable to provide upward mobility or equal partnerships.

"Both sides have legitimate grievances, and both sides are trapped," Wang says. "Women face discrimination in hiring and promotion because employers fear maternity costs. Men face impossible expectations to provide housing in an unaffordable market. Neither side trusts the other, and marriage becomes a high-stakes gamble nobody wants to take."

Online, the mutual recrimination is toxic. Men's forums describe women as "materialistic" and "ungrateful." Women's discussions (before censorship) detailed experiences of workplace discrimination, domestic violence, and unequal domestic labor even in supposedly modern marriages.

"My mother had me at 24, gave up her career, and spent her life serving my father's family," says Liu Xin (a nickname), a 29-year-old lawyer in Beijing who has frozen her eggs but doesn't plan to use them. "She tells me I should do the same. But I've seen what that life costs. I'd rather be alone."

The fertility implications are stark. Even with new incentives—including a nationwide childcare allowance of 3,600 yuan annually for children aged 0-3 starting in 2025—experts doubt minor subsidies will overcome the fundamental economics and trust deficit.

The Economic Backdrop

Understanding why "ligong thinking" resonates requires understanding China's interlocking economic crises.

The property sector, which accounts for roughly 25% of GDP, remains in distress two years after developers like Evergrande and Country Garden collapsed. Pre-sold homes sit unfinished. Prices are falling. Young people who might once have stretched to buy an apartment as a marriage prerequisite now see housing as a liability, not an asset.

Local government debt, much of it hidden in off-balance-sheet financing vehicles, reaches into the tens of trillions of yuan. As authorities consolidate these debts, local governments slash spending on social services precisely when young families need more support.

Youth unemployment—even using the government's narrowed definition excluding students—hovers in the mid-to-high teens. Millions of university graduates face underemployment, contract work without benefits, or the "gig economy" that offers no path to the stable middle-class life their parents achieved.

The economy faces deflationary pressure. Consumer confidence remains well below pre-2021 levels. Households are hoarding cash rather than spending or investing.

"The old promise was simple: work hard, obey the rules, and you'll achieve modest prosperity and social respect," explains Chen Yong (a nickname), an economist at a Beijing research institute who spoke on condition his real name not be used. "That promise is broken. Housing costs 50 years of savings. Marriage costs your parents' retirement. Children cost your future. Jobs are unstable. And the government's response is to ban discussion rather than fix the underlying problems."

What Censorship Cannot Solve

The rapid censorship of "ligong thinking" reveals Beijing's preferred approach: suppress the language people use to describe their reality while leaving that reality unchanged.

But removing a meme doesn't alter the economic fundamentals driving young people's choices. Marriage rates continue falling. Fertility continues collapsing. The gender trust gap continues widening.

"You can ban every term we create, but you can't ban the lived experience," Zhang Wei, the Shenzhen engineer, says. "My generation isn't stupid. We see what happened to our parents. We see what's available to us. We're making rational decisions based on rational analysis. That's not something you can censor away."

Demographic experts and economists argue that meaningful change would require comprehensive reforms: affordable universal childcare, enforced workplace equality, predictable family law, stabilized housing markets, quality job creation, and reformed local government finance that doesn't sacrifice social services.

"Essentially, you'd need to redesign significant parts of how Chinese society and economy function," Chen, the economist, says. "Minor subsidies and censorship campaigns won't cut it. The question is whether authorities recognize the scale of change needed before the demographic and social consequences become irreversible."

The Awakening Continues Underground

Meanwhile, the awakening that "ligong thinking" briefly articulated continues in encrypted chat groups, VPNs, and coded language.

"We just create new terms," Li Ming, the factory manager, says with a weary smile. "They ban one phrase, we invent another. But the conversation is happening whether they like it or not. Men are talking to each other. We're comparing notes. We're realizing this isn't individual failure—it's a systemic problem."

That realization—that personal struggles reflect structural failures rather than individual inadequacy—represents precisely what concerns authorities most. It transforms private disappointment into potential political awareness.

For now, that awareness remains largely apolitical, manifesting as personal withdrawal rather than collective action. Young men are "lying flat," pursuing hobbies and gaming rather than career advancement and family formation. Young women are choosing careers and independence over marriage and childbearing.

But the long-term implications are profound. A society cannot function indefinitely when its young people conclude that the prescribed path leads nowhere worth going. Economic growth slows. Innovation stalls. Pension systems collapse under demographic weight. Social atomization deepens.

"The Party's legitimacy has always rested partly on delivering prosperity and stability," Wang, the former sociology lecturer, observes. "But if young people can't access prosperity through hard work, and if family formation itself becomes a source of instability rather than security, what happens to that legitimacy?"

It's a question that censoring "ligong thinking" cannot answer. And it's a question that millions of young Chinese are now asking themselves, whatever language they use to frame it.

The term may be banned. The awakening it described continues.

Editor's note: Several names in this article are pseudonyms used to protect sources from potential retaliation. The individuals described represent composite experiences drawn from multiple interviews and verified social media accounts.

The Great Unraveling: How China's Young Men Are Waking Up—and Opting Out