There is now a Wikipedia article for Lying Flat. Not everyone in the party rejects the movement:
However, there were official voices offering more empathic opinions on the tang ping phenomenon. Beijing's party-affiliated Guangming Daily newspaper added that tang ping should not be discounted without reflection—if China wants to cultivate diligence in the young generation, it should first try to improve their quality of life.[11] Huang Ping, a literature professor who researches youth culture at East China Normal University, told Sixth Tone that official media outlets may be concerned about the tang ping lifestyle because of its potential to threaten productivity, but "humans aren't merely tools for making things... when you can't catch up with society's development—say, skyrocketing home prices—tang ping is actually the most rational choice".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_pingRelated Sinosphere cultural phenomena:
Buddha-like (Chinese: 佛系), or fo xi using its Chinese pronunciation,[1][2] is a buzzword used in China to describe young people who reject the rat race of the contemporary workaholic Chinese society in favour of a tranquil, apathetic life. The term is a neologism combination of two Chinese characters: "fó" (Chinese: 佛), meaning "Buddha"; and "xì" (Chinese: 系), meaning "series" or "school". Young people who uphold the Buddha-like mindset[3][4] are referred to as Buddha-like youths (Chinese: 佛系青年)[4] or Generation Zen.[5][6][7]
The term originated in a 2014 issue of the Japanese women's fashion magazine Non-no to refer to Japanese men who had progressed from being herbivore men to being monk-like men who consider it too exhausting to even bother interacting with women and enjoy being by themselves. The term has been also applied to numerous areas such as parenting, employment, online shopping, fandom, dating and interpersonal relationships. Although the word is inspired by the Buddhist doctrine of becoming spiritually satisfied through giving up anything tied to avarice, it is not a Buddhist principle.
The "Buddha-like" label is primarily adopted by young Chinese men from the post-90s and post-00s generations referring to their less-than-optimistic life outlook, although some post-80s experiencing quarter life crises also admit subscribing to the mindset. Stressed out by poor job prospects, decreased life satisfaction, increasingly stagnant social mobility, disappointing romantic life, familial complications of the one-child policy and soaring housing prices, youths have adopted the term to maintain their fortitude and as a backlash against society's high expectations. For example, the adherents of Buddha-like parenting would say that "there are not that many kids who will really amount to much, so why give them an exhausting childhood?"[1]
[...]
On 11 December 2017, a Chinese media company posted an article titled "The first group of post-90s generation who have become monks" (simplified Chinese: 第一批90后已经出家了; traditional Chinese: 第一批90後已經出家了) on its WeChat account Xin Shixiang (Chinese: 新世相), which had four million followers.[8][14][15] The essay, which discussed Buddha-like youth, went viral, in two days receiving over one million views on WeChat and 60 million on Sina Weibo.[15] It was the first time on Chinese platforms that the phrase "Buddha-like" became viral[16] and led to the neologism's broad adoption in Chinese society.[9] According to the scholar Jie Yang, the article was widely read by millions of viewers in China who connected with its message of living a Zen-like existence of being apathetic towards both wins and losses in life to confront the increased stress they feel from their community.[1]
[...]
The Buddha-like philosophy has been compared to the tang ping or "lie down" (Chinese: 躺平) philosophy an author introduced in 2021 in which the author had stopped working for two years and stopped caring about consumption.[23]
[...]
Whereas the diaosi and sang subcultures cast the blame for people's misfortune on extrinsic factors, the Buddha-like philosophy casts the blame inwards, bemoaning themselves for having physical and mental weaknesses and for being born in the wrong era.[17] The Buddha-like mindset is more biased to action and can be put more into practice in everyday life than the diaosi and sang subcultures.[17] The Buddha-like philosophy is to "don't fight, don't grab; let everything go" and urges tranquility and is a "sweet-hearted" mentality.[17] On the other hand, diaosi adherents have an "unwilling" mentality while sang followers have a dispirited mentality.[17] Buddha-like youth reject consumerism by saying, "I have the right not to consume, I have the right not to follow the logic led by consumerism, and I have the right not to pursue the materialism advocated by consumerism."[17] It is a progression from the diaosi subculture that covets the materialism of the wealthy and the sang subculture that finds passing pleasure in purchasing goods.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha-like_mindsetWhile the emerging Chinese counterculture has given youths idealistic new outlooks on life to save their souls from Western-style consumerism, other Sinosphere nations (and the US with its Antiwork movement) still remain in a state of paralyzed depression:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori_generationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_menhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomorihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampo_generationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-po_generationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_JoseonChina needs to capitalize on its cultural power and start exporting its counterculture. The Cold War was not ended due to sheer military or economic might alone. It was as much of a battle of ideology, culture, and soul. Youths throughout the world are longing for idealism and hope just as they started to do in the 1950s-60s, and this time around the new counterculture has started to emerge in China.
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