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Talent
The many faces of ‘juan’: How China’s labor evolution shows multinationals the cost of systems built on exhaustion
Some of China’s most profitable companies have thrived by piling pressure on workers – sometimes with tragic results. Zhike Lei outlines how multinationals can design work that avoids burnout and exploitation.
Rapid read:
- The velocity problem is permanent: AI evolves in six- to 12-month cycles while organizations plan in three- to five-year cycles, creating a fundamental mismatch that is difficult to resolve. Traditional planning approaches – both centralized control and chaotic adoption – fail to address this reality.
- Radical federalism as a solution: Push AI decisions to individual departments while maintaining minimal central coordination. Give teams budget autonomy to determine their optimal human–AI mix, hold them accountable for outcomes rather than processes, and let them iterate at domain-appropriate speeds.
- Reward configuration creativity: Success requires fundamentally changing incentives. Managers should be celebrated for achieving better outcomes with smaller teams and sophisticated AI, rather than being judged by headcount.
Foxconn (Fushikang), came to symbolize China’s manufacturing miracle. It was vast, disciplined, and astonishingly efficient – the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, assembling products for some of the most admired global brands. Then, in 2010, employees jumped from the upper floors of the complex, tragically resulting in 14 deaths by suicide at its massive factories in southern China, forcing global attention onto the human cost of making the devices that power modern life. Images of dormitories ringed with safety nets spread quickly. So did outrage.
What followed remained unsettling. Foxconn did not shrink. Orders continued. Production scaled. The global appetite for affordable, high-quality electronics proved stronger than moral discomfort. By 2019, the million-robot plan envisioned by then-CEO Terry Gou to replace human labor had not come to fruition; Foxconn factories had deployed roughly 100,000 robots – far fewer than originally expected. Apple’s production lines continued to rely heavily on human labor rather than a fully automated workforce. In November 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a major conflict erupted at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory, reportedly stemming from disputes over contract terms.
Foxconn’s labor cases mark one end of China’s labor pyramid, where work is often about endurance rather than fulfillment. At the other end are the campuses of Tencent, Huawei, ByteDance, and their peers – gleaming symbols of innovation and ambition. There, work is cognitively demanding, highly paid, and deeply meaningful. Yet exhaustion is common. Burnout is spoken of in hushed tones. And work doesn’t just take time – it takes over identity.
Between these two worlds lies a phenomenon that has come to define contemporary Chinese working life: 卷 (juan). Often translated as “involution,” juan captures the sense of escalating effort without proportional reward. But juan is not a single experience. It takes different forms depending on a person’s position in China’s labor hierarchy. Understanding these differences –and what they share – offers a powerful lesson for leaders in China and beyond: human capital challenges have evolved, but they have not disappeared. They have moved up the pyramid.
Across China’s manufacturing and service sectors, similar dynamics shape work at the bottom of the labor pyramid.
Juan at the bottom: When work is about survival
At Foxconn, juan is blunt and visible. Assembly-line work is repetitive by design. Tasks are simplified, movements standardized, and errors minimized. For many young workers – often migrants from rural areas – Foxconn represents not exploitation but opportunity: a stable income, access to healthcare, and proximity to urban life. This is why, despite years of criticism and widely reported poor conditions linked to worker suicides at its Shenzhen complex, Foxconn jobs remain in demand among those seeking economic mobility.
But Foxconn is far from an isolated case. Across China’s manufacturing and service sectors, similar dynamics shape work at the bottom of the labor pyramid. In the global fast-fashion supply chain, for example, warehouses supplying major brands such as Shein have been found to operate on schedules that routinely exceed legal work time limits, with seamstresses working extraordinarily long hours to meet production targets. These conditions are symptomatic of factories and workshops across the apparel sector, where workers often endure extended shifts with little autonomy and few protections.
In the gig economy, juan takes yet another form: precarity. Food-delivery riders and platform drivers face intense time pressures, algorithmic surveillance, and unstable earnings. Long hours are often required just to secure a basic income – a dynamic that became especially visible during the Shanghai lockdowns, when some delivery workers reportedly slept outdoors to remain available for work. Without formal contracts or robust social protections, risk is shifted almost entirely onto workers themselves.
Taken together, these cases show that at the bottom of China’s labor pyramid, juan is not about ambition or self-expression. It is about survival. Long hours, limited control over tasks, and weak institutional protections shape daily work experiences across sectors. Workers push themselves not to get ahead, but to stay afloat. Overtime becomes necessary rather than optional. Exit is costly. Voicing concerns is risky. Dignity becomes fragile in systems designed primarily for endurance.
Foxconn, fast-fashion suppliers, and platform labor reveal a consistent pattern: when work is designed to extract effort under conditions of constraint, human costs are absorbed quietly – until they erupt.
‘Juan’ at the top: When work becomes identity
Walk through the offices of Tencent or Huawei. The surroundings could not be more different from Foxconn’s factory floors: sleek buildings, open-plan offices, free meals, generous compensation, prestige. This is where China’s top talent gathers – engineers, designers, and product managers shaping platforms used by hundreds of millions of people. They are highly educated, well paid, and deeply invested in their work.
And yet, juan is alive here too.
At the top of the talent pyramid, juan takes a subtler form. It is not imposed by material scarcity, but fueled by aspiration, competition, and identity. Long hours are normalized. Weekends blur into weekdays. Performance is constantly benchmarked – against peers, global competitors, and rapidly moving technological frontiers. Success brings rewards, but also raises the bar. Work becomes not just something one does, but a core part of who one is.
This form of juan is widely discussed through the lens of the “996” schedule – working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Employees at major technology firms have openly described exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and burnout on internal forums and social media. Even when companies publicly distance themselves from explicit 996 expectations, they often persist informally through tight deadlines, late-night meetings, and global coordination across time zones.
Huawei’s corporate culture offers a revealing example. Founder Ren Zhengfei has repeatedly defended an intense, high-pressure environment – often described as “wolf culture” – as essential for survival amid fierce global competition and geopolitical constraints. Commitment, resilience, and sacrifice are framed not as costs, but as virtues. For many employees, this narrative is motivating. For them, it makes disengagement feel like betrayal – not just of the company, but of oneself.
Another example is Haier’s micro-enterprise (ME) model, which at first sight looks like liberation, but it often replaces hierarchy with the pressures of markets and managers with metrics. These MEs form the organization’s core and resemble the architecture of the World Wide Web, giving Haier flexibility at scale. Leaders are chosen competitively: several candidates pitch plans directly to the ME team. Poorly performing leaders are vulnerable to takeover, and any employee who believes they can run an ME better can make the case. Because performance data are transparent, opportunities and failures alike are visible. Instead of climbing hierarchies, employees build ventures.
What makes this version of juan especially difficult to address is that it is rarely experienced as coercion. Unlike at the bottom of the labor pyramid, employees here have options, status, and agency. Yet precisely because they care deeply about their work, they hesitate to slow down or set boundaries – even when they recognize the personal toll. When cognitive load is constant and reflection scarce, short-term output may remain high, but long-term adaptability erodes. Talent stays busy, but brittle. Over time, silence replaces candor. Recovery is postponed. Learning gives way to endurance.
In this sense, juan at the top is a story of over-identification rather than exploitation. The danger is not that people are forced to give too much, but that systems quietly encourage them to give everything.
Over the past decade, this logic has collided with a changing reality.
Two worlds, one system
Foxconn and Tencent are connected by the same underlying logic: growth through effort maximization. At the bottom, effort is extracted through necessity and control. At the top, it is elicited through ambition and meaning. In both cases, systems reward output while neglecting human limits.
Over the past decade, this logic has collided with a changing reality. China’s demographic dividend has faded. The working-age population has begun to shrink and age. Labor is scarcer and more expensive. Young workers are better educated, more informed, and less willing to accept unlimited sacrifice. At the same time, automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping jobs, intensifying skill mismatches and identity strain. These shifts expose a deeper truth: Human capital is no longer just a supply issue. It is a sustainability issue.
That concern becomes global as firms export these systems abroad. As Foxconn expanded production into lower-cost regions such as India and Vietnam, familiar patterns re-emerged. In 2021, 159 Foxconn workers in India were hospitalized after consuming unhygienic food, triggering protests and scrutiny of living and working conditions. Government inspectors raised concerns about health risks, overtime practices, and Sunday work. Yet in 2023, the state of Karnataka amended factory laws to permit 12-hour shifts and night work for women. India has different social dynamics – but the temptation is familiar: scale first, dignity later.
Foxconn once symbolized the price of speed in a global economy. Today, it poses a more constructive question – one that applies from Shenzhen to Zhengzhou to Bangalore, from factory floors to tech campuses: What kind of work system are we building – and who does it allow people to become?
When organizations rely primarily on endurance, they secure compliance.
Implications for multinational corporations (MNCs): Designing work that doesn’t run on exhaustion
What unites Foxconn’s factory floors and Tencent’s meeting rooms is not the nature of the work, but how work is designed and how dignity is governed. In both settings, people can come to feel replaceable – whether as hands or as minds. When organizations rely primarily on endurance, they secure compliance. When they invest in capability, voice, and growth, they build adaptability. So, what can multinational companies operating in China – and other emerging markets – do differently?
First, treat job design as a strategic lever, not a human resources afterthought. When jobs are overly fragmented, tightly monitored, and stripped of discretion, people lose ownership. When jobs are highly autonomous but endlessly expandable, work spills into every available hour. These designs look different, but they fail in the same way: they rely on human stamina to compensate for structural limits. Well-designed work does something different. It gives people a reason to care – and a way to stop.
- Fair pay and safe conditions are non-negotiable. But dignity goes further. Jobs that allow people to see results, exercise judgment, and develop skills reduce the need for constant overexertion. When employees understand why their work matters, effort becomes purposeful rather than endless.
Second, allow people to shape the work through job crafting. Even the best-designed roles cannot anticipate every pressure point – especially in volatile markets. In organizations trapped by juan, roles remain fixed while demands keep shifting. Employees respond by stretching themselves. In organizations that age well, roles evolve. Leaders redistribute work intelligently: rotating responsibilities to build a variety of skills, letting teams decide sequencing, and creating stretch assignments that develop capability instead of simply adding load.
- For multinationals in China, this flexibility is critical. Younger employees are more educated, more mobile, and less willing to sacrifice indefinitely. When roles adapt, pressure becomes manageable – and talent stays.
Third, build learning organizations that treat strain as feedback. Many firms respond to overload by optimizing within existing assumptions – tighter controls, revised targets, more tools. This keeps the system running, but rarely makes it healthier. Organizations that escape juan do something harder: they question whether the way work is organized still makes sense.
- They treat overload and disengagement not as personal failures, but as signals that the system needs redesigning. This kind of learning does not happen under fear or constant urgency. It requires leaders who make it safe to surface uncomfortable truths and who are willing to challenge their own assumptions. When employees believe that speaking up leads to improvement rather than punishment, effort shifts from endurance to innovation.
China’s labor evolution suggests that this lesson was never fully absorbed at scale.
The executive choice
Nearly a century ago, the Hawthorne studies revealed an uncomfortable truth: productivity depends not only on incentives and conditions, but on whether people believe their presence and experience matter. China’s labor evolution suggests that this lesson was never fully absorbed at scale.
Today, amid demographic decline resulting in talent scarcity, coupled with technological acceleration, the central question for boards is no longer how much effort organizations can extract – but how long systems built on endurance can remain viable.
The strongest multinationals will still demand a great deal from their people. But they will design work so effort compounds into capability, agency, and adaptability – rather than dissipating into fatigue. In China and across emerging markets, juan is not destiny. It is feedback. For executives and boards, the choice is whether to treat it as noise – or as a signal to redesign the system before performance, talent, or dignity erodes.
The author used ChatGPT 5.2 for data search, fact-checking, and initial copyediting.
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