Millennials are again complaining about work life balance

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Glitzy nightlife, museums, live concerts – Shanghai promises everything that attracts young professionals to an expensive city. But Li Zhepeng, a 25-year-old who arrived from China’s heartland, wasn’t able to enjoy any of it. Instead, he spent his time at the office working. He would clock in at 9am, after a 90-minute commute to the outer suburbs where his e-commerce firm rented cheap office space, and usually left well after 8pm. “Sometimes, there was no reason for the long hours – it was just the whole work culture,” Li says. The young professional was expected to stick to a grueling work schedule that has become so pervasive in Chinese companies that it’s now commonly referred to as 996: working from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week.

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The young professional was expected to stick to a grueling work schedule that has become so pervasive in Chinese companies that it’s now commonly referred to as 996: working from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week. For that, Li received a salary of 3,500 yuan a month, or about $560 (£406). That’s less than half of the monthly rental cost of a one-bedroom apartment outside the city centre, and so he’s sharing a small apartment with three flatmates. And as only children (China’s one-child policy wasn’t eased until 2015), they are also outspoken and pampered. “In my experience young people, especially the post-90s generation, are reluctant to work overtime – they are more self-centered,” says labour rights expert Li Jupeng, one of many who have observed some millennials challenging the 996 concept.

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