The Chinese dictatorship wants to tell its people and the world that it is a rising economic power. Many of its people aren’t buying it. Neither should we.
If you listen to the Chinese government, you’d think China is a rising superpower set to dominate the rest of the 21st century. If you listen to the Chinese people, they’re talking about China entering the “garbage time of history” — and they have a better argument than the government.
That phrase was coined by Chinese essayist Hu Wenhui in an article published in 2023 (English translation here). He meant “garbage time” in the same sense as that term is used in sports: the period of time when the game isn’t over yet but everyone knows who will win, such as the last five minutes of a 35–7 football game.
Hu wrote that reading about the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union reminded him of the current state of affairs in China. He also drew comparisons to previous periods of decline in Chinese history, such as the falls of the Tang and Ming dynasties.
History, like competitions, inevitably has periods of garbage time. When the overall situation is set, and defeat is inevitable, no matter how hard one tries, it’s just a futile struggle, and all that remains is to end with as much dignity as possible.
Because China has such a long history, said Hu, it has also had a lot of garbage time, and that has tended to produce great Chinese literature.
The term has taken on a life of its own this year, with many Chinese social-media users posting about the garbage time in the Chinese economy. I’ve been writing about China’s economic woes, debt problems, and the failure of its central planning for the past two years. The basic picture has not changed in that period: China’s growth is slowing despite significant fiscal and monetary stimulus, foreign businesses are more hesitant to invest in an increasingly authoritarian country, and the one-child policy has all but guaranteed the most severe demographic crisis any economy has ever had to face.
As Derek Scissors wrote for NR in 2023, “The main question is not who will win the competition but whether the U.S. will take advantage of a clearly superior situation and put the People’s Republic of China (PRC) well into the rearview mirror.” That also sounds like a description of garbage time, although from the winning team’s perspective.
You might expect that view from U.S. conservatives, but that it’s being echoed by Chinese social-media users is notable. The Times of India reports:
The rise of the “garbage time of history” as a term of discontent reflects a deeper societal shift. China’s younger generations, faced with economic prospects that seem to dwindle by the day, have adopted terms like “lying flat,” a rejection of societal pressures to achieve in a hyper-competitive environment. Where previous generations saw hope and opportunity in the face of hardship, today’s youth express resignation and frustration. It is no longer about striving for success but rather surviving in an unyielding system that offers little chance for upward mobility.
It has become such a phenomenon on Chinese social media that Chinese state media is pushing back. “The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing branch published a 3,000-character rebuttal titled ‘History’s Garbage Time? True or False?'” the Times of India article says. “The piece categorically dismissed the phrase, insisting that it is a ‘false proposition not worth refuting,'” which is a funny thing to say about a proposition you’re writing 3,000 characters to refute.
China became wealthier primarily through the adoption of limited free markets in certain key areas, a liberalization process that Xi Jinping has in large part halted and in some areas reversed. And that is causing added angst for the Chinese people, Times of India says:
In the late 1990s, China faced far worse economic conditions, with tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises liquidated and millions of workers laid off. Yet optimism persisted because citizens believed in the competence of reformist leaders, such as Zhu Rongji, who guided China through these difficulties. Today, that faith has eroded. The centralized, rigid leadership under Xi Jinping leaves little room for policy reversals or flexibility, and many Chinese see the current state of affairs as a dead end.
That is one key difference between democracies and authoritarian countries: the ability to correct mistakes. Authoritarian countries can make decisions faster and implement them more forcefully than democracies can, which can sometimes produce impressive economic growth in the short term. But when mistakes inevitably occur, the correction mechanisms of the market are not there to remedy them. In a market society, dissent can be rewarded with profits. In a dictatorship, it can be punished by demotion, imprisonment, or death.
The Chinese dictatorship wants to tell its people and the world that it is a rising economic power. Many of its people aren’t buying it. The world shouldn’t buy it either and should instead prepare for the consequences of a declining China and, one hopes, eventually, the fall of the communist regime.