The fatalistic tag “garbage time” began popping up on social media platforms over the past month. It was given a more recent boost when state media and commentators lined up to denounce the phrase and any suggestion that decline would follow downturn for China.

“This is a catchphrase insinuating that there’s no help and no hope, denying and downplaying everything in China,” [state-owned media outlet] Beijing Daily said in a commentary last week.

It follows another buzzword China’s censors have targeted as a threat to stability since it broke into the mainstream three years ago: “lying flat,” a call to a slacker life of limited ambition and quiet protest.

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There are other signs China’s collective confidence has suffered, according to survey data collected by Stanford University professor Scott Rozelle and others published in summary last week by the U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Rozelle found Chinese respondents to a survey were more pessimistic than they had been two decades ago, more likely to blame structural factors for determining whether a person is rich or poor and far less likely to believe hard work pays off.

In 2004, 62% agreed “in our country, effort is always rewarded." That dropped to 28% in the 2023 survey.