Three Sudden Deaths Rekindle Debate over Overwork Culture in China

BEIJING, March 8 (TMTPOST) -- For over a decade, repeated deaths from overwork have served a stern reminder that a toxic office culture has been formed and going unchecked in China. The recent sudden deaths of three young employees of tech companies in less than three months have frayed the nerves of the public and reignited the debate.

On the night of February 22, a 28-year-old pregnant woman sought advice for her predicament in a WeChat chat group of homeowners in a residential compound in Beijing. She said her husband, surnamed Wu, was an imaging algorithm engineer of China’s internet giant ByteDance and he suddenly passed away after having a heart attack in the office building on February 21. She was all alone with a 30-year mortgage with about US$3,000 monthly payment obligation, which was beyond her capability. She asked other homeowners if she could return the apartment and get the down payment back in order to support their baby to be delivered in about seven months. ByteDance is the owner of the short-video sharing app TikTok, which is popular in Western countries.  

She said her husband had total brain death, without breathing or heart beating on his own in the hospital. All his other organs failed on February 21.  

She said she and her husband had dated for many years before they got married. They were deeply in love. She would rather die as well if without their baby.

Her message sent the social media tech giant under fire. News organizations quickly followed up and tried to find out what happened.

At 0:30 am on February 23, ByteDance announced that the programmer’s conditions were critical in a statement. According to the statement, Wu, 28, went to the gym for exercise at around 6 pm on February 21. After about one hour, he felt dizzy and entered the nearby room for a rest. The coach noticed and asked if everything was alright. Wu said he might have low blood sugar level. The coach gave him a cup of sugary water and called the administrative desk. At 7:09 pm, the security manager came to measure his blood pressure and suggested treatment at a hospital. Wu began to vomit. The security manager and his co-worker, who have first aid certificates, conducted cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). At 7:18 pm, the coach called the ambulance. At 7:31 pm, the paramedics came. Meanwhile, the company called his wife to inform her of the emergency. At 20: 15 pm, the ambulance rushed Wu to the hospital. His wife and two coworkers accompanied him on the way.    

At 1:43 pm on February 23, ByteDance released a second statement, confirming the death of the employee. According to the statement, after 41 hours of medical treatment, Wu passed away.

ByteDance said the company had paid all the medical expense and would help the family go through the tough time.

According to his wife, Wu often worked overtime during his nearly four years of work at ByteDance. ByteDance said Wu was very diligent and responsible at work and he got along well with his coworkers. The company was very sorry for his passing. 

It was the most festive week in China when people get reunited with their family and celebrate. However, a content moderator nicknamed “Twilight Wooden Heart” of short-video streaming website Bilibili was allegedly told to work on night shifts due to a shortage of staffers during the public holidays. He, as the acting leader of the image and text monitoring team, worked from 9 pm to 9 am for five consecutive days, i.e. from Chinese New Year’s Eve to the fourth day of the Year of Tiger, according to a blogger named "Wang Luobei"on Weibo. 

He had a stroke at home on February 4 due to long hours of work and was declared dead in the hospital on February 5, according to the blogger. The blogger has about 5 million followers.

The moderator, 24, was the only kid of his family. He died in Wuhan, Hubei province, which was far from his hometown.

He joined Bilibili’s Wuhan subsidiary in May 2020. He worked very hard and was kind to his colleagues. His role in the company required him to continue to work during the Spring Festival, according to the company.

The video streaming website admitted that after his passing, his family and coworkers were in enormous shock and sorrow and thus communications between them were not smooth. The website expressed their deep regret to the family of the moderator.

According to the statement, on February 7, Bilibili, whose headquarters is located in Shanghai, had formed a dedicated team for the incident, which arrived in Wuhan on February 8. The team, led by three Vice Presidents, comforted the moderator’s family in Wuhan and helped arrange the related matters.

"The passing of an excellent employee like "Twilight Wooden Heart" is an enormous loss to the company. It also sounded a warning to us," the company said on its official Weibo account. "We should take more proactive measures to protect the health of our content moderators in order to prevent similar tragedies from occurring again."

Meanwhile, Bilibili announced it would immediately add 1,000 new moderators to the existing content moderation department. In addition to annual medical checkups, all employees of the content reviewing department will receive more medical checkups, starting in February. The 24/7 health consulting office will be set up to guarantee physical and mental health of the employees.    

However, the company insisted that the moderator did not work overtime and he worked 9:30 am to 6:30 pm in his last days and received three times as much as regular pay.

The website"s statement immediately became one of the top trending topics on Weibo and the working conditions of young white collars were placed under scrunity. 

According to the disclosure made the company, 866 employees work in Wuhan, accounting for about 10% of its total employees. As of December 31, 2020, 2,413 employees, or 28% of the total employees, are responsible for monitoring content. 93.6% of the total employees were less than 27 years old.

On December 14, 2021, China’s social media and gaming giant Tencent released a statement, saying Mao Xingyun, a game developer at Tianmei Fi Workshop passed away on the morning of December 11 by accident. He was 30 years old. Due to respect for his family and the deceased, the company declined to disclose any further information.  

“As an indispensible member of the team, Xingyun was always a very excellent employee with outstanding expertise. His work performance was superb in the past consecutive years. We are very sorry and sad for his passing,” Tencent said in the statement.

An IT industry insider said that they were all shocked by his passing and still could not believe it.

Mao’s high school classmate said: “he has always been busy with work. We had a dinner party at one time. But before the dinner was over, he left for the company to work overtime.”

In the past few years, the public opinion towards the overwork culture has shifted significantly. In April 2019, Jack Ma, the founder of China"s dominant e-commerce platform Alibaba, said working from 9 am to 9 pm for six days a week was “a blessing.” He had expected that his comments would resonate with a huge number of his followers, who called him “Daddy Ma" jokingly. However, his words were met with outrage and triggered a nation-wide debate about the brutal working culture of big tech companies. Since then, the overwork culture has been seen by an overwhelming majority of young employees as “exploitative.” But it is still a long way to go in terms of strict implementation of labor laws.

Given that the three young employees got sick either at work or in their company building and passed away quickly in the hospital, the cause of their deaths can be clearly attributed to “work injury”, according to Chinese law. In China, death from work injury is defined as dying within 48 hours after getting sick at work.

However, many employees died after many days of long hours at work and their deaths may not suit the definition. Some of them died in more than two days after being rushed to the hospital from work and thus their family would not get any compensation from their employers. Some labor right advocates are calling for the amendament of the law to properly protect the right of employees.

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