China's societal cracks are showing

An unfolding crisis in China serves as a cautionary tale for other nations.

A chart making the rounds on Chinese social media lays bare the psychological toll of living in an authoritarian state. Titled “A Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Chinese Society,” it maps the bleak options facing the average citizen: exile, ennui, exhaustion, or exploitation. China Digital Times explains the chart as follows:

The X-axis measures willingness to conform to Chinese society, while the Y-axis tracks effort. It’s a grim choose-your-own-adventure for navigating life in an oppressive system:

• Non-conformist/active? Emigrate and hope for a better life somewhere else.

• Non-conformist/passive? Withdraw entirely — reject the rat race, and do as little as possible.

• Conformist/active? Spin your wheels in endless, meaningless striving, like “Sisyphus on a Peloton.”

• Conformist/passive? Accept your fate as a cog in the machine, ready to be used and discarded.

This is where China’s tightly controlled system has landed its people. A society run on authoritarian controls and the punishment of free thought has seemingly crushed the human spirit. The result, to paraphrase our friend

Limina

over at The Human Responsibilities Tribunal is that, rather than living, people end up simply avoiding dying. How’s that for a post-Turkey tryptophan withdrawal depression?

The rise in "revenge against society" attacks in China highlights the potential for violence when systemic issues remain unaddressed. (UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré)

Sadly, this isn’t just China’s story — it’s a warning for the rest of us who still inhabit the ‘free’ world, thanks to decades of policy and regulation, tightening control, systemic inequality, and the erosion of hope.

For years, the Chinese government sold its citizens the China Dream: work hard, obey, and prosperity will follow. But for many people, that dream has turned to dust. Hyper-competition in school and work leaves people exhausted and unfulfilled. Skyrocketing living costs, stagnant wages, and widening wealth gaps turn ambition into a cruel joke. The result? A generation opting out. Why play a game you can’t win?

Movements like “lie flat” or its cousin “let it rot” aren’t just fads — they’re acts of defiance. For young people drowning in a system that exploits them, rejecting traditional success metrics feels like the only way to reclaim agency. But when opting out becomes a survival strategy, it’s a sign the system is broken.

Warning to a waning West

If you think this can’t happen where you live, think again. What’s unfolding in China isn’t some alien phenomenon — it’s a glimpse of where unchecked systems inevitably lead. And in the West, the writing is already on the wall.

Skyrocketing rents. Student loan debt. Wages that can’t keep up with inflation. The same economic pressures driving disillusionment in China are alive and well in the West. A shrinking middle class and a growing wealth gap mean fewer opportunities and more people questioning the system.

Meanwhile, China’s government has perfected the art of oppression. From its Orwellian surveillance state to its aggressive censorship, the Communist Party ensures that conformity is mandatory, not optional. Step out of line, and you risk losing everything — your career, your family, even your freedom. In such an environment, creativity, dissent, and individuality wither.

The institutional response to COVID in much of the West ushered our society quickly down that same path, largely in the name of safety and supposedly, not killing Grandma (Dr. Richard Urso recently said the quiet part out loud — it was all a lie.)

Western nations are also dabbling in measures similar to China’s surveillance state, from mass data collection to censorship disguised as content moderation — all brought to us under the guise of security and order. The result is a slow but steady erosion of the freedoms that make life worth living.

China’s authoritarian model, often touted as ruthlessly efficient, is proving anything but. When a society prioritizes control over empowerment, and exploitation over equity, it collapses under its own weight. The same dynamics are at play everywhere, and the West isn’t immune.

The chart being shared across Chinese social media isn’t just a psychoanalysis of China — it’s a mirror reflecting where we’re all headed if we don’t wake up.

Frighteningly, the chart offers a ‘Z-axis’ as one possible exit route from the matrix: "Xianzhong." This term references Zhang Xianzhong, a 17th-century rebel peasant infamous for his brutal massacres during the Ming dynasty.

In contemporary Chinese discourse, "Xianzhong" has become a byword for "revenge against society" attacks, where individuals, often disenfranchised men, resort to violence against innocents as an expression of their profound discontent. Think, for example, of the recent spate of stabbings and car ramming attacks reported in the international media.

To be clear, Collapse Life is reporting on the Z-axis option, not advocating for it. Still, the undercurrents of chaos and violence always seem to simmer underneath a society stretched to its max. It’s something we all must be aware of and should all come to terms with.

The fact that "Xianzhong" was an option in the China Digital Times article underscores the escalating severity of the social pressure cooker in China. When citizens perceive all conventional avenues — emigration, withdrawal, relentless striving, or passive acceptance — as untenable, some may tragically resort to violence as a form of protest or despair.

If even a system as tightly controlled as China’s is buckling under the pressure, what happens when looser, more fragile democracies face the same economic and social stresses?

Smart-minded elites have been noodling over this question for some time — look no further than the World Economic Forum poster boy, Yuval Noah Harari, who happily proclaims the human is ‘hack-able’ thanks to advanced technology.

Reflecting on Harari’s creepy prognosis, the most frightening prospect is not which of the Chinese options we’ll get to choose, but whether that choice may have already been made for us; thanks to such technologies as mRNA, we may have already been hacked.

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