Something crucial is happening in China. Among the young, a new, widespread trend has emerged, which causes panic with the party's leadership. Young people have mastered the spirit of inactivity and resignation, defined by a fresh concept bailan "Let him rot."
Born of disappointment and opposition to long-standing cultural standards bailan encourages a minimalist approach to work, to execute duties only for the essential minimum hours and to put your own good first alternatively of career development.
A akin approach is besides referred to as Tang ping (to lay a pie). This. slang Neologism, which means “to lay down a pastry and endure blows”, means to have no desires and to approach life more indifferently. Both concepts propose individual rejection of social force forcing Work and Overcoming expectations at the expense of neglecting social relations. They so signal refusal to participate rat race, that offers In return, little and less.
This phenomenon is not limited to the young generation alone. Let us look at another phenomenon: in July 2024 the media reported that more and more Chinese workers quit stressful office work and choose more flexible physical work. Says a 27 - year - old from Wuhan: “I like cleaning. [In the country] the surviving rate is rising, so request for cleaning services is expanding rapidly. This shift made me feel dizzy. I feel little emotional pressure. all day I have quite a few energy.”
Such an approach seems completely apolitical: it rejects active opposition to the institutions of power and attempts to enter into dialog with the ruling. But is there another way?
More applicable than Chinese bailan mass protests appear in Serbia. They are unique due to the fact that they propose a 3rd option, the exact other of attitude bailan. The demonstrators openly admit that there is rot in the Serbian state, but they inactive care; they do not want to let it rot to the rest.
Demonstrations began in November 2024 in the village Novi Sad – after the train station The roof collapsed, causing the death of 15 people and serious injuries in two. In time, demonstrations spread to 200 cities and towns across the country and proceed to this day. Although they are headed by university students demanding to take work for the collapse of the station, even hundreds of thousands of people frequently participate in protests. It is the largest student movement in Europe since 1968. The collapse of the hall's station roof was like an detonation of a volcano – the minute erstwhile the boiling discontent across Serbia yet reached its critical point.
Demonstrators are outraged by corruption and environmental devastation, specified as government plans to open large lithium mines, but not only. They besides argue how Serbian president Vučić and his government treat the people of the country. What the authorities present as a fast modernisation of the country that joins the global marketplace has proved to be a cover for a dense network of corruption, the sale of national resources to abroad investors on murmured conditions, the gradual elimination of opposition media, and even the suspected deaths of known opponents of the government (often masked as road accidents). All of this is happening before our eyes, in broad daylight, testifying to the perfidious deficiency of average decency among the rulers.
The current situation is much worse than in the worst times of Milošević's rule. But why are these protests so special?
The demonstrators repeat over and over again: “We have no political demands, we distance ourselves from opposition parties. We only call on Serbian institutions to act in the interests of citizens." They have made respective demands that they request unconditionally. They want to disclose the full documentation of the renovation of Novi Sad railway station, access to all papers so that the government can hide nothing from the public, retreat charges against those arrested during the first anti-government demonstration in November, and charge those who attacked students at a demonstration in Belgrade (some of those who physically attacked demonstrators later turned out to be members of the ruling party).
In short, demonstrators want to break off the enchanted ellipse in which the ruling party, exercising control over all institutions, takes you hostage.
Vučić He reacted not only by force but besides by any kind of wedge. The more Vučić panics, the more his desperation in inviting demonstrators to dialogue, to negociate (as he emphasizes with pleasure, is simply a practice adopted in civilized countries). However, demonstrators refuse dialogue, request only their demands.
Social protests usually bring at least a threat of violence, while demonstrators request a truly open dialog in which they will be taken seriously by the rulers. However, the other is the case: no 1 is threatening force and dialog is openly rejected. specified stubbornness in demanding fulfilment of demands in its simplicity causes confusion, becoming a feed for conspiracy theories: who is behind it? Conssternation and (false) sense of chaos is compounded by the fact that so far no figures have emerged to lead these protests (probably due to the fact that any individual considered to be a leader or leader would become the mark of repression).
Therefore, protests in Serbia are someway akin to Chinese bailan: no typical political commitment, no spirit of opposition. Of course, the time will come erstwhile organized politics will enter the game, but the “apoliticity” demonstrated by the demonstrators serves to guarantee that the fresh policy is not just another version of the old hand. We have a clear field where authentic law and public order can begin.
That is why Serbian protests deserve unconditional support. They show that in certain situations a simple appeal for law and public order can be more subversive than a force aimed at overthrowing power. Demonstrators request law and public order without any unwritten rules that lead to corruption and authoritarian power – so they are far from the old anarchist left that dominated student protests in 1968.
After a 24-hour blockade of the Danube Bridge in Novi Sad, demonstrators decided to stay 3 hours longer to clean up the area where the rally took place. It may even be hard to imagine Parisian students who would then clean up these stones from the streets of the Latin 4th by throwing stones at the police.
However, regardless of the stated intentions of the protesters, their demonstrations are profoundly political. Is there not, then, a hypocrisy to blame? Nope. And that's due to the fact that they're political in a much more extremist way. They do not want to make policies in the existing space (mainly unwritten) of the rules, they want to change from scratch the way state institutions operate in Serbia.
Hypocrisy can only be accused of Brussels, as the European Union does not exert the slightest force on Vučic, fearing that it would push him to embrace Russia. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, although she expressed support for the "Georgian people fighting for democracy", is now importantly silent about the rebellion in Serbia, a country that has been formally applying for EU membership since 2012. For now, the Union allows Alexandar Vučić to do what he wants because, as any commentators note, it promises Europe stableness and lithium.
The deficiency of any criticism from the Union, even in the face of large-scale electoral fraud, has frequently left Serbian civilian society on the ice. Therefore, Serbian demonstrations are not another colorful revolution. This is not another movement under the slogan "Ku of Western democracy", and demonstrators are not waving EU flags here. In short, the EU has reached another ethnic-political bottom after the war in Gaza.
From English she translated Dorota Blabolil-Obrębska.
