By Sylvie Zhuang, CNN
Hong Kong (CNN) — China’s top spy agency has come out of the shadows to warn that its young people are being duped by foreign forces into shirking hard work and prioritizing their individual emotions at the expense of national development. It hasn’t landed well online.
“Young people are China’s future and have also become a primary target for ideological infiltration by hostile anti-China forces abroad,” says a handsome young man wearing military uniform in a video posted by the State Security Ministry’s official account last week.
The post warned young people to stay vigilant against “complex opinion traps” and any “lying flat” narratives that propagate the message that hard work is futile.
That hard work in China’s increasingly cutthroat economy is indeed futile is an opinion that’s been gaining ground in recent years – and is encapsulated in the phrase to “lie flat.”
The phrase apparently traces its origins to a 2021 post in an online forum run by Chinese search giant Baidu. The author of that now-deleted post suggested that instead of working one’s entire life chasing an apartment and traditional family values, people should pursue a simple life.
It’s taken off in recent years.
While China’s economy is home to cutting-edge AI and technological developments, it has taken hits from the Covid-19 pandemic and a property market slump, as well as being buffeted by a recent trade war with the US. In March, Beijing set its lowest growth target in decades, as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with weak domestic demand and an uncertain global outlook.
The ministry’s post went on to say it had recently uncovered cases of foreign governments and organizations funding influencers in China, and using online platforms to amplify social anxieties among Chinese youth.
“By manufacturing negative emotions, they attempt to elevate individual hardships into broader group antagonisms, causing young people to be subtly misled and swept along without realizing it,” it said.
“Ultimately, this aims to erode the spirit of hard work among China’s youth and even undermine the foundations of societal values,” the post concluded.
It didn’t take long for the post to get burned on social media.
Some users asked why the spy agency hadn’t been more specific on which foreign countries were allegedly paying out money – so they could get in touch.
“I already lay flat for so long, why didn’t anyone tell me about this good thing sooner?” one post read.
“Wow, even foreign forces know they must pay people for their work,” another post read, referencing widely reported incidents of some companies in China delaying salary payments during periods of economic downturn.
Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser specializing in China at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said the backlash shows “there’s a big mismatch between how authorities and many young people see ‘lying flat.’”
“For most social media users, ‘lying flat’ is part online joke, part coping mechanism – not something that needs elevating to a matter of national security,” said Osman.
China’s State Security Ministry has raised its profile in recent years. It regularly posts articles on WeChat, China’s most popular social media platform, warning people to stay vigilant against foreign forces seeking to gain access to state secrets.
According to the ministry, foreign spies are infiltrating everything from mapping apps to weather stations. It has also posted details of what it claims are espionage activities carried out by American and British