I keep thinking about the moment I read that Silicon Valley startups were posting “996 required” in job listings. It was August 2025. A 36kr article tracked how Chinese overtime culture had jumped the Pacific. Rilla, an AI startup, advertised…
I keep thinking about a number I read last week: over 70 banks in China have shut down their credit card centers since the start of 2025. Guangfa Bank’s Zhengzhou center went from three or four hundred people at its…
There is a moment in the BBC’s recent feature on China’s AI agent boom that I can’t stop thinking about. A programmer named Mr. Peng, who works in IT at a manufacturing company in the Yangtze River Delta, says his…
In February 2025, DJI started turning off the lights at 9 p.m. Security guards walked the floors. Employees who used to camp at their desks until midnight were sent home. Some said they felt relief. Others said they felt panic,…
Last week, a friend who works at a Beijing internet company told me her office cafeteria started charging for milk. Not all milk. Just the second carton. The first one is still free, part of the “three free meals” package…