edit: seems like there are contradicting statements from him on this so I'll remove the stuff I had written earlier. It appears he is generally against forced hours but highly encourages his employees to work those hours anyways.
This single quote misrepresents his opinion, here are some extra quotes:
> But in a speech to Alibaba staff on Thursday, Ma said the company expected people to be ready to work 12 hours a day since it had huge commitments to its clients.
> “If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when will you? Do you think never having to work 996 in your life is an honour to boast about?” he said in the speech.
Because you’re Asian? (My dad once asked me, when he perceived I was slacking as a teenager: “Do you know how to work a sixteen hour day?” Worked fine for him—he grew up in a village in Bangladesh and sent two kids to college in the United States. Writ large, it seemed to work pretty well for Japan and Korea as well, which went from developing nations to developed nations in a few generations.
In a place like China, you have to work hard. Most do it on a farm or factory. You’re lucky if you can do it in an office.)
I'm genuinely not seeking to troll or start a flame war here, so I apologize profusely if I speak out of line, I'm just looking to understand the current Chinese mindset.
All that working hard is to catch up to a country that pushed the envelope on a 40 hour work week, and at least made an effort to respect the right of the worker to have a life outside the office?
I find the argunent/cultural value unconvincing when most of the country's innovation has been fostered through copycatting, IP theft, and exploitative market gatekeeping.
I don't mean any offense, nor do I assert the United States is saintly in the non-abuse of workforce, or in any trade related department really, but given what we've been finding out about Chinese IP hijacking, their hostile trade practices, and personal experience working with Chinese H-1B's (whom if I catch trying to pull that 996 nonsense, I send home after 40 hours), I do think it's just an underhanded tactic used by authority figures on a vulnerable population.
The fruits of passion are best grown without compulsion. Play unites artist and engineer as Tao does one in the state of no mind.
One cannot be moved or inspired by heaven and earth stuck behind a screen toiling for one's master.
Hell, weren't the Chinese the same culture who brought us the gem of wisdom that "one who lacks control of oneself brings only strife when faced with the responsibility to control something larger than themselves"[Confucius paraphrased]? Where have these workers had the time to develop as healthy individuals? Not just to gather academic knowledge, but the wisdom born of personal folly to employ that intelligence well?
For a wealthy man in a purportedly communist regime, Mr. Ma seens, at least to me, whether he realizes it or not, to be falling into the worst tendencies of capitalistic practices hook, line, and sinker. The People suffer under the boot of a man who has grown so accustomed to the creature comforts afforded by his position that he has forgotten the reason he is where he is in the first place.
To usher the Chinese people to a new age of glory and prosperity.
At least, that's the Party line, is it not?
Surely others see the disconnect here, or am I just mad, and completely out of tune with the zeitgeist/realpolitik?
I’m not Chinese, but the sentiment is pan-Asian. You can’t build an industrial superpower from a country of rice farmers by working 40 hours a week. (Nor did the rice farmers work 40 days a week before industrialization!) Certainly, the US didn’t do it. (See: “Protestant work ethic.”) The 40-hour work week is something we adopted after our ascendency. It’s a luxury for the already rich. It’s possibly a luxury for those who face little outside competition—we will see if it survives the rest of the world catching up.
There's a difference, even in the "Protestant Work Ethic" though. You're expected to work for yourself, to get what needs to be done, done. That "work" includes living righteously, starting a/serving a family, contributing to and propping up your community, and making yourself a better person.
Nowhere in that is a blanket "Thou shalt do and ask no questions, lest you be punished."
There isn't Japan. Blind obedience went out of style in 1945, and should stay gone. We all know where that leads.
"A son who does not admonish an unreasonable father leads his family to ruin.", Confucius [paraphrased] again.
The 40 hour work week isn't even a luxury. It's required if you want some semblance of social stability. Industrialization was revolutionary in that tooling, factories, and infrastructure created an environment where work could happen 24/7/365. That doesn't mean it should, especially to the benefit of a few, at the cost of the livability of life for everyone else. Industry is meant to cure societal ills, not to act as a building block for exponential manufacture of new societal ills to be fixed by the very root cause of the original malaise.
I may not be Chinese, and may not fully understand current pan-Asian culture, but I weep at the tragedy I see unfolding whereby a culture seems to be cannibalizing itself into something nigh-unrecognizable from what it once was.
From my time in China, I get the feeling from many of those working massive hours that it's a lot of work, but there is a lot of opportunity there, and for those who find a way, they can achieve success and riches. There's a bit of gold rush euphoria driving the whole thing.
Korea had a different feel. It was more of a feeling of banding together and weathering the hard times for a brighter future. Korea doesn't really have natural resources, and they don't have a lot of manpower, so the only thing they can do is work massive hours. Now that the nation has achieved some kind of success, it's getting harder and harder to get the younger generation to buy into that mentality, in addition to the lack of jobs and security of the previous generations.
Different culture. Even here in HK, people wear their overtime as a badge of honour (if you check IG before bedtime, everyone is taking pics of their nearly empty office with a timestamp). Your standing is society is elevated by being important enough that you had to stay at work until midnight and people will say "oh they're so hard working"
Recently, I have seen multiple Bloomberg articles that were way outside the normal margins of journalistic prose, and far into the territory of clickbait and even misinformation. A while back I thought Bloomberg was a high quality source.
Either Bloomberg got a lot worse; or I was too dumb to realize how bad they were in the past.
