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Involution

A Worker Inquiry Amid China's Youth Unemployment Wave

By: Gonglao Collective, Eli Friedman (Translator)

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Paperback | 20 October 2026

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Paperback

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20.9 x 14.0 x 0.9

Paperback

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A fascinating, intimate window onto China’s intensifying youth employment crisis

China’s hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. “Involution” is the term they have popularized for the ever-intensifying pressures of a job market where the rewards and conditions only worsen. Forced into a cutthroat doom loop, the people interviewed in Involution highlight how they are pitted against their colleagues, assigned pointless or impossible tasks, and warped by hostile environments. In response to an antisocial work culture, forms of passive resistance, such as “lying flat” and quiet quitting, have become endemic.

Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective paints a haunting picture of involution’s chokehold on young lives. As Eli Friedman highlights in his foreword, the experiences described will resonate with workers across the Western world. This is essential reading for anyone looking for a way out of fruitless competition and into solidarity.

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