East Asian work culture is world renowned for its long hours and exhausted laborers. Japanese salary men hustling to catch the last train home, their sleeping bodies stretched out along the seats (sometimes in curiously uncomfortable positions), is an image familiar to many people across the world.
Potentially
suicidal devotion to work has in recent decades been viewed as a plague,
especially among the Japanese. The Japanese term karōshi, literally death from
overwork, has entered the lexicon of Western journalists and medical
practitioners. It even has its own Wikipedia entry.
Despite
having the some of the world’s best-kept records on the subject, however, death
from overwork is far from unique to Japan. Instances of it have been known to
occur the world over, not least in China, which now reportedly leads the world
in work exhaustion-related deaths.
It
is estimated that some 600,000 people die from work-related stress and its
effects every year in China.
This
number comes as no surprise to those familiar with the anti-suicide
nets in infamous
Chinese labor mills such as Foxconn. Long hours, rough conditions, low pay and
poor future prospects have been a recipe for work stress-induced suicide at
facilities across the country.
While
such figures remain alarmingly high, they account for a relatively small
percentage of the total number ofkarōshi victims
in China. Perhaps surprisingly, manual laborers have largely proved resilient
to poor work conditions and strenuous physical demands. It’s the so-called
“mental labor” jobs, such as those in the advertising field, that have been the
primary contributor to dangerously high levels of work-related stress.
These
kinds of jobs can be found at all socioeconomic levels, with a slightly
disproportionate representation by the middle class. IT employees have shown
some of the highest levels of work-related stress with 98.8 percent
reporting the negative influence of their job on personal health.
Such
health risks include insomnia, listlessness, weight gain and long recovery
times for small illnesses such as the common cold. Long-term exposure to these
conditions can lead to obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, which in turn
can cause heart disease and stroke – the primary killer of karōshi victims in China.
For
the scores of young people in China’s modern metropolises regularly working
copious amounts of (usually unpaid) overtime, this information is already old
news. Competition for comfortable and well-paid positions in Shanghai or
Beijing is notoriously fierce. Those without proper guanxi, or social connections,
often never reap the benefits of their death-defying hard work. Much of China’s
middle class, especially the young, earn only a fraction what their Western or
Japanese workaholic counterparts do.
China’s
financial capital of Shanghai has recently seen a sharp increase in the average
marrying age of its citizens. The jump is attributed
largely to the
demanding work pace, which in turn is often justified by traditional cultural
requirements of having purchased a house and car before marriage.
The
rise of workaholic culture has also coincided with decreasing birth rates in
cities and towns, including areas where couples are allowed to have more than
one child. The expense of childcare and the parents’ inability to care for
children are two contributing factors. In this sense, China is mirroring the
same effects Japan has seen from its own overworked populace.
In
the absence of widespread social reform, there is a small push to offer insurance for those who die
from overwork. The lack of concrete links between cause of death and
work-related stress currently makes the struggle an uphill battle.
As
China marches its way toward unparalleled economic prominence on the world
stage, many issues will stand in its way, including environmental concerns,
political corruption and domestic insurgency. Now add an increasingly beleaguered
workforce. As in Japan, it is an issue the government cannot afford to ignore.
Source: the diplomat
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