On Sinopessimism, or Junkies of Futility
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22023809 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dino Ge Zhang (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-28 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Made in China Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2206-9119 • E-ISSN: 2652-6352 |
| Publisher | ANU Press (PUBLISHER • AU) |
| DOI | 10.22459/mic.10.01.2025.08 |
| OpenAlex | W4415559467 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Sinopessimism—a neologism that describes sentiments of stagnation and pragmatic recalibrations in response to China’s economic slowdown—has been fermenting since the mid-2010s. Long overlooked, it surfaced sporadically in media coverage of youth disengagement, from sanhe vagabonds to sang culture, before gaining sharper definition through terms such as ‘involution’ and tangping (‘lying flat’). This essay offers a preliminary lexicon of Sinopessimism, framing it as a form of popular, embodied knowledge—a kind of low theory. It explores coping strategies including anti-work, hetero-pessimism, runology (outmigration), and revived debates about ‘national character’, while tracing connections with the global undercommons
Embodied cognition · Headline · Lexicon · Neologism · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |