Communist Party censors are cracking down hard on a viral sensation in Chinese social media, “Garbage Time of History,” a popular meme disappointed citizens use to describe their country’s current state of economic malaise and government bumbling.

“Garbage Time” means the dreary slog to the inevitable end of a basketball game in which one of the teams has no hope of winning. The general idea is that the Chinese people are the losing team as their economy implodes, and they have few illusions about making a comeback.

The phrase “Garbage Time of History” appears to have been coined in September 2023 in an article that has now been ruthlessly expunged from China’s Internet backwater by Communist censors.

Author Hu Wenhui, the editor of a small local paper, wrote an article about the inevitable collapse of governments like the Soviet Union that many readers interpreted as an allegory to the fading reign of current Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

“When the overall situation is set and defeat is inevitable no matter how hard you try, it’s just a futile struggle. How should those unfortunate enough to encounter the garbage time of history conduct themselves?” Hu asked, not realizing he was about to create a viral sensation and then get figuratively dragged off to the gulag for his efforts — or maybe literally, as Reuters noted on Wednesday that Hu is hard to get in touch with these days.

The meme picked up steam as the Chinese public struggled to reconcile the optimism of state media reports with a moribund economy, flaccid stock market, dreary job market, and looming real estate apocalypse.

Chinese state sociologists describe “Garbage Time of History” as, essentially, the next step in public despair after “Lying Flat,” a millennial protest that began in 2021. Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks do not mean that comparison as a compliment — they loathed “Lying Flat,” which was perceived as a rebellion against China’s demanding work culture, and they hate “Garbage Time of History” even more because it is a rebellion against the State.

“Lying Flat,” or tangping, is an old Chinese phrase that means laziness or negligence. Disgruntled millennials restyled it as a protest slogan against China’s work culture of long hours and modest pay, announcing they would rather lie down and do nothing than become cogs in such a ruthless machine. 

Some of the tangping revolutionaries went home to live with their parents and become “full-time children.” Others decided to work odd jobs instead of becoming corporate employees.

“Garbage Time” is an even more dangerous idea than “Lying Flat” because it explicitly criticizes the government and the almighty Chinese Communist Party. It is a way of saying Xi and his henchmen have driven China into a ditch, and, since Xi’s subjects have absolutely no way to change their government, despair is the only logical response. It is a way of rejecting state media propaganda about happy times being just around the corner.

Chinese officials furiously insist the “Garbage Time” meme is a foreign plot, a scurrilous effort to demoralize the Chinese public with lies. To the surprise of Communist leaders, the “Garbage Time” meme surged in popularity the more they denounced it.

The “Garbage Time” meme began growing in popularity in June and then blew up in early July when a female employee at a Chinese financial company supposedly threw herself off the roof of the company’s headquarters because her salary cut left her unable to pay her mortgage. The details of that story have been disputed, but the sad story struck a chord with Chinese subjects who could see themselves being comparably ruined by a salary cut or rent increase.

A popular element of “Garbage Time” memes is a graphic called the “2024 Misery Ranking Grand Slam,” which gives readers a chart of misery points they can tally up for misfortunes, such as losing their jobs or getting stuck with a bad mortgage, to calculate exactly how miserable they are.

Chinese state media are responding with more glowing profiles of Xi Jinping, more praise for his alleged genius, more cooked economic statistics, and more furious orders for Communist subjects to stop writing gloomy social media posts about the economy.

None of it seems to be working this time. One social media critic, fearing he might be censored for talking frankly about the recent scandal over cooking oil being transported in unwashed fuel tankers, wrote a farewell in advance to his followers: “No matter what happens, I am very happy to spend the garbage time of history with you.”