neijuan

Neijuan, or neijuan (内卷), is a Chinese sociological term describing a self-perpetuating spiral of competition in which individuals invest increasingly large amounts of effort to secure limited rewards, yet overall gains do not rise proportionally because resources are finite. The term is a domestically adapted form of the concept of involution and gained prominence in Chinese academic and popular discourse during the late 2010s as education, employment, housing, and urban life showed escalating inputs with relatively stagnant outputs.

Common settings for neijuan include education, where exam culture and cram-school practices push up time and money costs without guaranteed improvements in outcomes; the workplace, where long hours and intense performance pressure can yield burnout with only marginal career advancement; and housing or consumer life, where rising prices amplify competition for limited resources. The core mechanism is a feedback loop: more people invest effort to win scarce rewards, raising costs and expectations for everyone, yet the resulting gains remain limited.

Responses range from individual strategies such as reduced personal investment or “lie-flat” (tangping) attitudes to calls for policy reform aimed at reducing incentives for overwork, improving education equity, and stabilizing housing markets. Whether neijuan signifies a uniquely Chinese pattern or a broader form of competitive saturation is debated among scholars and commentators.

Critics argue the term can be vague or overly generalized, potentially obscuring structural factors like labor markets, inequality, and policy choices. Proponents contend it captures a real tendency in modern economies where intensified effort yields diminishing returns despite high social and economic costs.