Involution: A Worker Inquiry Amid China’s Youth Unemployment Wave

China’s hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective examines involution — the ever-intensifying pressure of a labour market in which rewards decline while demands and competition grow. The people interviewed describe unemployment, overwork, pointless or impossible tasks, hostile workplaces, downward mobility and the feeling that effort and reward have come apart. Pitted against their colleagues and trapped in a cutthroat employment system, many respond through forms of passive resistance such as lying flat and quiet quitting. From a teacher in Hunan to a debt collector in Jilin, these testimonies offer an intimate account of educated young people trying to preserve their dignity, sense of self and agency amid China’s economic crisis. Translated by Eli Friedman and published by Verso Books in 2026. Paperback, 160 pages.