Punching Down: Beijing’s Playbook for Unwinding “Involutionary Competition”

Patricia M. Thornton CLM Issue 86 December 2025.pdf

Download PDF • 500KB

How does an authoritarian government that has leaned heavily on “performance legitimacy” for decades sidestep popular ire amidst a prolonged economic slowdown? The discursive career of “involution” (内卷) from online meme to policy object reveals how Beijing adopted and then rebranded a social media buzzword to shift popular blame away from the center. On the surface, Xi’s new campaign to stamp out “involutionary competition” (‘内卷式’竞争) targets collusive practices between local governments and enterprises, but, in fact, it focuses chiefly on clearing away obstacles to the construction of a “unified national market” (全国统一大市场), further enhancing the power and control of central party-state elites over the economy. The tactic of commandeering the language of grassroots critique to “punch down” against local agents while promoting a central agenda serves to redirect social critique away from the “core” and crowds out divergent online discussions. At the same time, it signals a nominal degree of official responsiveness to and engagement with popular concerns. 

On the second day of the 2024 China Automotive Forum in Shanghai’s Jiading district, at a panel on the theme of "Building Chinese Automotive Brands in the Era of Globalization," representatives of two of China’s largest electronic vehicle (EV) brands unexpectedly staged a public “competitor criticism session” (友商批判大会). Li Yunfei, the media and public relations head of national champion BYD— China’s largest domestic manufacturer of EVs— took the podium to announce that, after two months of internal discussion, BYD had concluded that “involution” (内卷), a popular buzzword in Chinese cyberspace denoting a situation in which inputs fail to produce corresponding returns, was actually good for the EV business: “The more Chinese car-making involutes, the stronger and better it becomes” (中国汽车是越卷越强，越卷越好). Li pointed to surging investment in research and development, up 250 percent from four years earlier, with Chinese EVs not only outcompeting foreign competitors with higher-quality products but also commanding a nearly 60 percent global market share. Next in line to speak, Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of BYD competitor, Geely, swiftly retorted that the competitiveness of the Chinese EV industry was actually the result of Deng Xiaoping’s “great policy of reform and openness” (改革开放的伟大政策), the selfless dedication of generations of Chinese autoworkers, and substantial state support. “Yet against this backdrop, some car companies, having fully enjoyed the benefits of national policies, nevertheless engage in cut-throat competition and challenge legal boundaries. I believe this is a Pandora's box, leading to a series of disastrous consequences” (在这样的背景下，有些汽车企业完全享受了国家的政策红利，却还发起了内卷行动，并挑战法律高压线，我认为这就是潘多拉的盒子，导致了一系列恶性后果). Without directly naming Geely’s competitor, Yang likened “involution” to “drinking poison to quench one’s thirst” (饮鸩止渴): irresponsible for the country and misleading to consumers. He expressed his hope for a “fair, just, and transparent resolution” (公平、公正、公开的法律结论) to a pending lawsuit over emissions and fuel tank standards, and he gestured angrily at some firms’ reliance on troll farms to smear their competitors online. “I hope that players who break the rules will simply accept their punishment and not become angry and demand that those who follow the rules leave the table” (希望不守规矩的牌友自己接受处罚，不要恼羞成怒要求守规矩的牌友下牌), Yang redounded. “One day, the truth will surely come to light” (真相一定会大白于天下), he warned in closing. The visibly stunned secretary-general of the China Automobile Manufacturers Association who was chairing the session then took the stage to observe that “although Mr. Yang’s remarks deviated somewhat from the theme of this forum” (杨总的发言与论坛的主题有一定的背离), what was clear was that “the Chinese automotive industry has not yet reached a consensus" (显然中国汽车产业还没有形成共识) on the impact of involution (内卷) on the sector.[1]

Official guidance on the matter was not long in coming. Although the term “involution” had appeared in social media beginning in 2018 to refer to instances of “intense competition” (白热化的竞争) waged between individuals hoping to “gain a small competitive advantage in society” (以使自己在社会上获取少量竞争优势),[2] a Politburo meeting on July 30, 2024, seized upon the buzzword and redefined it as a form of market pathology, stressing “the need to strengthen industry self-regulation to prevent vicious ‘involutionary’ competition” (要强化行业自律，防止“内卷式”恶性竞争).[3] By December, the center’s stance against "involutionary" competition had become clearer, and the targets of regulation were more defined. The 2024 Central Economic Work Conference shifted away from the earlier call for industry-wide self-regulation to propose sterner measures: “comprehensive rectification” (综合整治), targeting "the behavior of local governments and enterprises" (地方政府和企业行为), and the nefarious activities of so-called “micro-business entities” (微观经营主体) seeking to seize market share. [4] By March 2025, after Premier Li Qiang, for the first time, inveighed against “involutionary competition” in his agenda-setting work report to the “Two Sessions” meeting,[5] delegates queued up to excoriate “bottomless price wars, bandwagon-style competition, and talent poaching” (一些行业无底线“卷价格”、跟风式“卷赛道”、围剿式“卷人才”的情况) and to call upon the center to “regulate the behavior of local governments and enterprises” (规范地方政府和企业行为) that were engaging in such activities.[6] Even more recently, the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan,[7] adopted by the Fourth Plenum at the end of October 2025, enshrined the injunction to “comprehensively rectify ‘involutionary competition’” (综合整治“内卷式”竞争), signaling the start of a new campaign.

There are at least two striking features of the heated official rhetoric surrounding “involutionary competition” that are worth noting. The first is that, notwithstanding the Central Economic Work Conference’s targeting of alleged collusive practices between local governments and “micro-business entities” as the root cause of the problem, the Rhodium Group has found that as of late last year, 90 percent of auto purchase subsidies were in fact covered by the central government, a practice that was almost certainly “contributing to price wars and entrenching ‘involutionary competition’ within the industry.”[8] Second, as Scott Kennedy recently observed, conflicted views about market competition from within the upper echelons of the party-state are nothing new: the currency devaluations that swept China’s neighbors following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis also triggered iterative price wars for Chinese industrial products that central officials and commentators described as “disorderly, vicious competition” (无序, 恶性竞争), and these were accompanied by sanctimonious calls for firms to adhere strictly to “industry self-discipline” (行业自律). Nearly every case of an industry association attempting to police “self-disciplined prices” (自律价) at that time failed, distracting both public and official attention away from deeper and more sustained measures capable of addressing the root causes of overcapacity.[9] 

Several contemporary commentators in and outside of China have pointed to the discontinuities and contradictions between the current official discourse on “involutionary competition” emanating from Beijing and economic realities related to the need for thorough-going structural reform. Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, observed that “it is easy to criticize local governments for their paternalistic mentality and excessive subsidies to firms in their jurisdictions” (轻易地批评地方政府的家长心态 对辖内企业进行了过度补贴) when the real “root cause lies upstream” (根源在上游).[10] Chief economist of Changjiang Securities Wu Ge conceded that while “orderly micro-market competition is related to involution” (“内卷”与微观市场竞争秩序等相关), the sheer scale of the problem of declining prices across multiple industries “is more suggestive of a macroeconomic phenomenon” (更像是宏观经济现象) and reflects the fundamental fact that domestic demand has continued to weaken as a result of the “significant adjustment” (大幅调整) in the real estate market.[11] Michael Pettis was more pointed in his critique: with the decline of investment in China’s sharply deflated property sector, a substantial uptick in manufacturing investment was poured into industries that Beijing identified as the “new three” (solar panels, EVs, and batteries) that would spur China’s future growth in order to forestall a drop in GDP growth; however, “it was the combination of a surge in manufacturing investment and the unevenness of its distribution that ultimately determined the contours of ‘involution.’”[12] Furthermore, as the Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei pointed out, the focus of the recent Fourth Plenum communiqué[13] on advancing China’s “scientific and technological self-reliance” virtually guarantees that the “authorities will respond passively to ... structural problems, making it difficult to achieve any meaningful [economic] rebalancing,”[14] despite repeated official acknowledgments by the top leadership that economic restructuring remains a pressing priority.

This suggests that one lesson to be gleaned from the party-state’s ongoing anti-involution campaign may be that the official discourse is serving a rather different, and arguably diversionary, function relative to solving the fundamental problem of overcapacity. As with “positive energy” (正能量), which originated as a mocking online term of sarcastic dismissal in 2010,[15] and “lying flat” (躺平), an expression popularized mostly by youth intermittently employed in the gig economy,[16] the party-state absorbed the neologism and redeployed “involution” to serve official ends unrelated to the social ills from which the term originally arose.[17] This process of adopting, diverting, and emptying the language of grassroots critique by converting it into either a vehicle for so-called “soft propaganda” or a conveyance for unrelated state policy goals has been identified as “political PUA” (政治PUA)[18]— in other words, a form of “gaslighting”—by wary Chinese netizens.[19] As The Paper (澎湃) recently pointed out, involution’s fierce competition “is merely a surface-level phenomenon” (现象层面的表象): excavating its root cause reveals an unnamed and hidden “third-party that benefits” (获利的第三方), “successfully transforming vertical class antagonism into a horizontal conflict between workers and serving as an ideological shield” (成功地将纵向的阶级对立转化为了工人之间的横向冲突，起到了意识形态遮蔽的作用) for “the third party that controls the game from outside and profits from it” (在这个游戏之外主导游戏并从中获利的第三方).[20] The chief political utility of Xi’s anti-involution campaign likewise lies not in addressing the immediate problems of disorderly and excessive competition nor the chronic malaise of excess supply and inadequate demand. Instead, its function as a vehicle for blame attribution serves to downshift the focus of attention away from the unimpeachable “core” (核心) at the center to a range of less powerful targets, ranging from “micro-business entities” to “local governments and enterprises,” over which Beijing is seeking to increase control for other reasons. At the same time, the tactic of appropriation and diversion also serves to crowd out divergent online discussions while, at the same time, to signal a nominal degree of official responsiveness to popular concerns.

From “Involution” to “Involutionary Competition”

By all accounts, “involution” emerged in Chinese online spaces as a popular, self-deprecating expression of exasperated surrender among netizens who formerly self-identified as “white- collar workers” (白领居), but who, in about 2018, began to hail each other instead as “working stiffs” (打工人), and even as “corporate slaves” (社畜).[21] The term was then picked up by university and secondary-school students to describe their experience of intense competition that demanded extreme effort but nonetheless yielded meager, if any, rewards.[22] The buzzword then catapulted into widespread usage in Chinese cyberspace after anthropologist Xiang Biao, during an interview with The Paper (澎湃) two years later, characterized it as an “endless cycle of self-flagellation” (不断抽打自己).[23] 

Most conceptual histories of the concept of “involution” circulating in Chinese cyberspace trace the first appearance of the term to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), where it appears as an antonym for “evolution.” In the 18th century, "evolution" (or "preformationism") was a theory of biological generation that maintained that an organism's parts were already pre-formed in miniature within the seed, and they then simply unfolded or grew larger over time. In Kant’s Critique of Judgment, he is said to have used the term "involution" to describe instead a process of repetitive, inward folding within fixed boundaries, implying a process that becomes rigid and into which effort is put to increase internal complexity on an existing basis, but the system or the form itself fails to transform or to advance to a new stage.[24]

The term was then picked up American anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser to describe increasingly intricate cultural forms, such as Gothic architecture and Maori carvings. It was later popularized by Clifford Geertz in his work on wet-rice cultivation in colonial Indonesia, where increasing labor intensity in the paddies served to increase output per area but not per head.[25] UCLA’s Philip C. C. Huang, in his widely cited 1985 monograph, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, was the first to apply the term to the Chinese context. Huang observed that population pressures in the Hebei–Northwest Shandong plain after the sixteenth century “often forced the marginal product of labor on the poorer family farms below market wages for the laborer and below the subsistence needs of the cultivator’s household,”[26] a condition that more contemporary commentators have described as a kind of “growth without development” (没有发展的增长).[27] In nominating the term as one of the top buzzwords of 2020, The Paper (澎湃) proposed that in China’s rapidly industrializing society, “involution” no longer represented a simple contest between man and nature, but instead it had become a war between people: “a bare-knuckled brawl for jobs, professional skills, and academic qualifications, a brutal race for survival and an ever-accelerating game” (近乎赤身肉搏般地岗位竞争、专业竞赛与学历比拼，意味着残酷的生存竞赛和加速游戏) that ensnares every member of society in a "gyroscopic death loop” (陀螺式的死循环) whereby “everyone must constantly whip and mobilize themselves to gain even a tiny competitive advantage” (每个人都要不断抽打自己、动员自己，才能获得极为少量的竞争优势).[28]

In a now-censored post to an internal corporate message board in 2021, Huawei employee Qiu Xiaohai proposed that the essence of involution was a kind of "institutionalized internal competition" (制度化的内部竞争) that arose from thousands of years of a continuous imperial cultural tradition "domesticating countless 'compliant citizens'" (驯化出无数的“顺民”). “The core of [China’s] imperial culture keeps people ignorant in order to facilitate their subjection, while the most distinctive feature of eunuch culture is flattery and currying favor with the master in order to gain favor” (帝王文化的核心是愚民，以利于其统治，而太监文化的最大特色就是拍马屁，讨好主子，以期获得主子的恩赐), Qiu argued, “a silent tragedy” (无声的悲哀) “gradually consumes our intelligence and youth, and dulls our vigor” (慢慢消耗了我们的聪明才智和青春年华，磨平了个人的锐气).[29] 

Unsurprisingly, the sharp post-COVID rise in youth unemployment rates saw the spread of “involution” discourse across platforms frequented by young adults, particularly across Douban groups like the “985 Waste Products Self-Help Group” (985 废物自救小组) and the “Center for Research into the Phenomenon of Involution” (内卷化现象研究中心).[30] Popular complaints from parents and others about “educational involution” (教育内卷) likely prompted the General Office of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, in July 2021, to issue a joint opinion calling for a “double reduction” (双减) in the burdens of homework and extracurricular programming on primary and secondary-school students.[31] At the same time, the term “involution” began to appear alongside critiques of incremental upgrades and price-slashing in various industries, including mobile phones[32] and express courier services[33] in 2021 and solar panels and solar cells[34] and EVs[35] in 2023. Within months, the Politburo in July 2024 seized upon this burgeoning discourse and linked it both to excessive competition and to price wars, and it delivered its judgment on “the need to strengthen industry self-regulation to prevent vicious ‘involutionary’ competition” (要强化行业自律，防止“内卷式”恶性竞争), marking its debut as an official formulation.

By December 2024, commentators in the official media reporting on the Central Economic Work Conference defined “involutionary competition” specifically as “microbusiness entities engaging in direct or indirect price wars to maliciously lower commodity prices and seize market share” (微观经营主体通过恶意降低商品价格...以直接或变相的价格战，相互争夺市场空间), a “zero-sum game” (零和博弈) that did nothing to promote technological progress.[36] Interestingly, the conference determined that “involutionary competition” was impeding the twin goals of developing “new-quality productive forces” (新质生产力) through technological innovation and thwarting the construction of a modern industrial system, and it pledged to “regulate the behavior of local governments and enterprises” (规范地方政府和企业行为) as part of the rectification process. Separately, the conference also noted a series of longer-term goals with respect to implementing landmark reform measures, including a promise to “formulate guidelines for the construction of a unified national market” (制定全国统一大市场建设指引).[37] Central offices like the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), and other departments quickly issued supportive statements attacking "local protectionism and market segmentation" (地方保护和市场分割) as well as guidelines for the construction of a unified market.^[38] 

In his government work report to the “Two Sessions” meeting in March, when Premier Li Qiang for the first time addressed “involutionary competition,”^[39] he did so in the context of the need to eliminate the twin evils of “local protectionism and market segmentation” (破除地方保护和市场分割) and to remove obstacles to “market access and exit” (打通市场准入退出). The solution to all of the above, Li summarized, was the construction of a “unified national market” (全国统一大市场) that would in theory give central authorities greatly enhanced ability to control market access, ostensibly “to optimize the market access environment for new business models and sectors” (优化新业态新领域市场准入环境),[40] an objective reiterated in the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan.^[41] A detailed “Opinion on Accelerating the Construction of a Unified National Market” (关于加快建设全国统一大市场的意见) that has been circulating since April 2022 contains several of the key catch phrases that have been reiterated in the latest anti-involution measures, including, most prominently the need to “break down local protectionism and market segmentation” (打破地方保护和市场分割).[42]

Seeking (the) Truth on “Involutionary Competition”

The anti-involutionary competition campaign reached a peak in June and July of 2025, with a series of nine commentaries on the topic published in the party’s flagship journal, Seeking Truth (求实) that collectively refer positively to a “unified national market” eight times.[43] The first article, “How to See—and What to Do About—‘Involution-style’ Competition,” defined the problem as “vicious market competition that yields no overall benefit” (市场上不会带来整体收益的恶性竞争), created, in large part, by local governments insisting on “allowing companies that should have exited the market to continue operating ... exacerbating homogeneous and low-quality competition” (地方政府干预导致本该退出的企业得以继续存活...加剧了同质化、低质化竞争).[44] The commentary published on June 29 repeated the earlier criticism of local protectionism and market segmentation but added the additional charge that “some locales engage in ‘subsidy competition’ and create ‘policy havens’” (有的地方搞起“补贴竞赛”、打造“政策洼地”), which disrupt the “higher-level dynamic balance between supply and demand, and directly affect employee wage levels, government tax revenue, and investor confidence” (供需间高水平动态平衡的形成，还直接影响员工工资水平、政府税收收入、未来投资信心). The key to eliminating involutionary competition resides in a “properly balanced relationship between an effective government and an efficient market” (统筹好有为政府与有效市场的关系).[45] 

The July 1 commentary detailed new legal frameworks that had been either recently introduced or recently revised with an eye to eliminating local protectionism, market segmentation, and involutionary competition. The chief culprits included enterprises that rely mostly on price wars, “expanding production to blindly chase hot trends” (盲目追逐所谓的热点跟风扩产), and that focus chiefly on advertising and marketing tactics and on local governments that create “policy loopholes” (政策洼地), “blindly launch” [盲目上马] emerging and key industrial clusters, and introduce market barriers in order to preferentially favor local industries.[46] Commentators on July 11 and July 23 suggested that both local governments and existing local enterprises that failed to take measures to eliminate “involutionary competition” would be punished under existing legal frameworks, and they should be “guided” through a suite of policy tools, supported by industry associations, to accept central guidance on the process of market restructuring.[47]

In each case, the ultimate solution to “involutionary competition” was to be found in the construction of a unified national market, a message that was driven home further by Xi Jinping’s capstone contribution in Seeking Truth, “Deepen the Construction of a Unified National Market” (纵深推进全国统一大市场建设), published on September 15. Xi introduced a new formulation (提法)— the “five unifications and one openness” (五统一、一开放)— to summarize the key themes highlighted in the preceding nine commentaries and to call again for the urgent elimination of “involutionary competition,” defined as “the chaotic situation of disorderly low-price competition among enterprises” (着力整治企业低价无序竞争乱象). Outlining future efforts to “rectify” (整治) local government and enterprise practices identified as “chronic ailments” (顽瘴痼疾], he promised swift justice would be meted out against local cadres who “engage in behavior such as illegal investment promotion, local protectionism, and against new officials ignoring the commitments of their predecessors” (对违规招商引资、搞地方保护、新官不理旧账等行为).[48]

This was by no means new territory for Xi, whose preference for “top-level design” solutions is now well-entrenched. As early as 2013, in his address to the 18th Central Committee’s Third Plenum on “Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform," Xi expressed his concern about, after more than two decades of economic reform, problems of “irregular market order” (市场秩序不规范), “inconsistent market rules with rampant departmental and local protectionism” (市场规则不统一,部门保护主义和地方保护主义大量存在), and “inadequate market competition hindering the survival of the fittest and structural adjustments” (市场竞争不充分，阻碍优胜劣汰和结构调整). The plenary session decided, at Xi’s urging, to commit to “constructing a unified, open, competitive, and orderly market system” (建设统一开放竞争有序的市场体系),[49] and in November 2013 it established the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, which was upgraded to a formal commission in March 2018 and is now commonly known as the Central Commission for Deepening Reform (中央深改委). Xi has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the role of government in maintaining macroeconomic stability, ensuring fair competition, strengthening market supervision, and overseeing market order.[50] The official formulation—“Building a unified, open, and competitive market system” (建设统一开放、竞争有序的市场体系)—has shifted somewhat over time, but Xi has remained consistently committed to a vastly greater role of the state in economic planning, despite fears among many that Xi’s unified national market could actually represent a return to the planned economy[51] or that the clearing of the so-called “bottlenecks” (堵点) will only serve to further entrench the monopoly of resources by vested interests.[52]

Xi and the Politics of Blame Attribution

How does an authoritarian government that has for decades leaned heavily on “performance legitimacy”[53] manage to maintain popular support amidst a prolonged economic slowdown? Although, as Zhao Dingxin warned in 2009, “performance legitimacy is intrinsically unstable because it carries concrete promises and therefore will trigger an immediate political crisis when the promises are unfulfilled,”[54] a new study based on public opinion surveys carried out in China in 2023 found that reframing blame attribution through “soft propaganda” formulations remains an indispensable tool in Beijing’s playbook. Although, as Elfstrom and Li demonstrate, straightforward economic cheerleading like the “theory of singing the bright prospects of China’s economy” (唱响中国经济光明论)[55] appears to have a negligible effect on how ordinary Chinese citizens assign blame for their economic woes among a predefined range of options, Xi’s formulation of a “new normal of economic development” (经济发展新常态)^[56] to explain slower economic growth appears to encourage citizens to attribute blame downward on local government officials.[57] 

Xi’s latest “anti-involution” campaign suggests a particular tactic of blame attribution: “punching down” by commandeering dissenting discourses from pockets of marginalized and disgruntled netizens, and redirecting criticism, either to the margins or beyond the bounds of the party-state. In this case, a bottom-up meme of exhaustion—“involution” (内卷)—has been re-coded by the party-state into a governable object, “involutionary competition,” and then yoked to a state agenda of building a “unified national market,” a pre-existing aim unrelated to the needs and concerns of the netizens who originally coined the term. The move performs double duty for the party-state: it projects a veneer of responsiveness to public angst about price wars and employment precarity while simultaneously redirecting blame toward local governments and enterprises (including the so-called “micro-business actors”) far from the actual center of power.

Yet the historical record and current policy mix suggest a deeper paradox. Central instruments—including a personnel system that enforces a stringent target-responsibility system with respect to local officials, frequent industrial upgrading mandates, and campaign-style enforcement—have long intensified intraregional competition even as Beijing denounces “disorderly low-price competition.” In practice, enforcement of the rapidly evolving set of “anti-involution” measures in place—including, for example, the 2024 Fair Competition Review Ordinance (公平竞争审查条例)[58] and the 2025 Anti-Unfair Competition Law (中华人民共和国反不正当争),[59] national standard-setting in particular industries,[60] and regulating market entry and exit mechanisms[61]—punch down by targeting local agents more immediately than they work to reform the vast and entrenched systems of incentives that are keeping overcapacity and underconsumption in place.

Politically, this is the latest iteration in what has become a familiar blame-shifting cycle: the leadership in Beijing taps into an online meme implicitly signaling popular discontent, and then it redeploys it either as part of a propaganda effort or to legitimate enhanced control over agents at the margins of power, thereby purging it of its contentious charge. Predictably, the “anti-involution” campaign focuses chiefly on downstream symptoms rather than addressing upstream causes. The likely end-result is episodic rectification, not structural rebalancing. If the party-state now defines success as sustainable “high-quality development” and a “unified national market,” two guardrails matter: the credible, transparent application of fair-competition review to all market participants, including national champions like BYD and SOEs; and demand-side reforms that encourage higher household consumption through income redistribution and social-welfare reform, which would reduce enterprise-level brinkmanship.

About the Contributor

Patricia M. Thornton is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Dickson Poon China Centre, and Fellow of Merton College, at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence, and State-Making in Modern China, co-editor (with Vivienne Shue) of To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power, and many peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. She is also former Acting Editor-in-Chief of The China Quarterly. Her research focuses on the Chinese Communist Party, party-building, civil society, and popular protest in transnational China.

Notes

[1] 老贾, “中国汽车人已经坐不到一桌了：吉利与比亚迪「‌内卷」‌争论公开化,” Sina.com (新浪财经), July 16, 2024, https://archive.ph/mKn0T .

[2] 王芊霓, 葛诗凡, “人类学家项飙谈内卷：一种不允许失败和退出的竞争,” 澎湃, October 22, 2020, https://archive.ph/wYCAG .

[3] 新华社, “中共中央政治局召开会议 分析研究当前经济形势和经济工作 审议《整治形式主义为基层减负若干规定》 中共中央总书记习近平主持会议,” July 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/U9PzB ; “中央政治局会议：防止 ‘内卷式’恶性竞争，畅通落后低效产能退出渠道,” 澎湃, July 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/PojLU ;周小铃, “中央政治局会议首提防止 ‘内卷式’恶性竞争,” 南方周末, August 5, 2024, https://archive.ph/4Lhk3 .

[4] CCTV, “综合整治 ‘内卷式’竞争 营造良好发展环境,” December 21, 2024, https://archive.ph/XnwAV ; however, it is worth noting that “micro-business entities” (微观经营主体) are not targeted. or even mentioned. in the original read-out. 新华社, “中央经济工作会议在北京举行 习近平发表重要讲话,” December 12, 2024, https://archive.ph/ZP6wx .

[5] 新华社, “李强在政府工作报告中提出，推动标志性改革举措加快落地，更好发挥经济体制改革牵引作用,” March 5, 2025, https://archive.ph/2MixY ; Luna Sun, “At ‘Two Sessions,”’ China Takes Aim at an Insidious Economic Foe: ‘Neijuan,’ ” South China Morning Post, March 5, 2025, https://archive.ph/N0hgl .

[6] 新华社, “‘内卷式’ 竞争如何破局?” March 8, 2025, https://archive.ph/eFBcT .

[7] 新华社, “中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议,” October 28. 2025, https://archive.ph/tJcSi .

[8] Endeavour Tian, “China’s Subsidies Are Fueling ‘Involutionary’ Competition in the Auto Sector,” Rhodium Group, August 7, 2025, https://archive.ph/MxQ7x . According to several accounts, in 2024 BYD was by far the largest beneficiary, helping to explain why BYD’s Li Yunfei proposed that “involution” had been beneficial to China’s EV industry. “财政部下达2024年新能源汽车补贴！比亚迪79亿、拿下三分之一,” May 10, 2024, https://archive.ph/N5Dd5 ; “中国向本土电动汽车补贴数十亿美元 比亚迪是最大受益者,” Sina.com, April 16, 2024, https://archive.ph/Ubl1w . Although EVs were omitted from the list of national strategic industries in the newly released Fifteenth Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), Rhodium’s best projections trajectory, for the first time in more than a decade, suggests that these government subsidies will need to be extended through at least 2026 (and possibly beyond) to avoid triggering future price wars and protectionist measures. See “China Signals It Will Pull Plug on Subsidies for EVs with Five-year Plan Exclusion,” Reuters, October 29, 2025, https://archive.ph/tVg5Land Endeavour Tian, “China’s Subsidies Are Fueling ‘Involutionary’ Competition,” Rhodium Group, August 7, 2025, https://archive.ph/MxQ7x ; “China’s EV Makers Got $231 Billion in Aid Over Last 15 Years,” Bloomberg News, June 21, 2024, https://archive.is/ePA8f ; “中國電動車比亞迪才賣4,900輛車就有5.84億元補助！你說環保難道不是門好生意?” SiCAR愛車酷, July 15, 2025, https://archive.ph/Y9sWP .

[9] Scott Kennedy, “Involution and Industry Self-Discipline: Echoes from the Past,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), September 17, 2025, https://archive.ph/2f9wr . See also Scott Kennedy, "The Price of Competition: Pricing Policies and the Struggle to Define China's Economic System," The China Journal, no. 49 (January 2003): 1–3.

[10] 聂日明 , “反内卷应该是一个 ‘慢工’和 ‘细活,’ ” 界面新闻, June 13, 2025, https://archive.ph/a3YGg .

[11] 伍戈, “反内卷，反什么?,” 财新, July 28, 2025, https://archive.ph/dpLF5 ; the complete text of Wu Ge’s article appears under the same title on his blog, at https://archive.ph/bFURx .

[12] Michael Pettis, “What’s New about Involution?” Carnegie Endowment, August 26, 2025, https://archive.ph/WTJCA or https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/08/whats-new-about-involution?lang=en .

[13] “中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第四次全体会议公报,” October 23, 2025, https://archive.ph/fH6tB .

[14] Lingling Wei, “China’s Priority: Tech Supremacy, Not a Higher Standard of Living,” Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2025, https://archive.ph/wnR1r .

[15] 维基百科, “正能量 (流行语),” https://archive.ph/xnmNm .

[16] 维基百科, “躺平,” https://archive.ph/z85OT .

[17] 徐辰阳, “‘内卷’里的 ‘打工人,’ 这些网红热词里的日常生活,” 澎湃, October 23, 2020, https://archive.ph/pEX7J .

[18] The term “political PUA” (政治PUA) was originally coined by Weibo influencer (微博大V) @熊智violinist in a now-deleted February 7, 2020, post entitled “如果你觉得XX不好 那你就去……” (preserved by China Digital Times, https://archive.ph/HOXzx ). See also “有关政治PUA的一些想法,” 品葱, February 9. 2020, https://archive.ph/PHIuf .

[19] This is a parallel process to the technique of “strategic distraction,” noted by Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts in "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument," American Political Science Review 111, no. 3 (2017): 484–501.

[20] “内卷、加速与当代中国社会的 ‘赶工游戏,’” 澎湃, December 16, 2020, https://archive.ph/KVfAq .

[21] 徐辰阳, “‘内卷’里的 ‘打工人’这些网红热词里的日常生活,” 澎湃, October 23, 2020, https://archive.ph/pEX7J .

[22] 堂吉偉德, “如何看待 ‘內卷’不該是一道人生難題,” 北京青年報, November 10, 2020, https://archive.is/DqBia .

[23] 徐辰阳, “专访｜人类学家项飙谈内卷：一种不允许失败和退出的竞争,” 澎湃, October 23, 2020, https://archive.ph/pEX7J .

[24] See, for example, “内卷、加速与当代中国社会的 ‘赶工游戏,’” 澎湃, December 16, 2020, https://archive.ph/KVfAq . However, most reliable English-language translations of Kant’s three critiques gloss his uses of the term involutio or emboîtement as preformationism, which he contrasts with epigenesis.

[25] “Agricultural Involution,” Wikipedia, https://archive.ph/Moqno .

[26] Philip C. C. Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), p. 8. See also “黄宗智独家澄清：意外走红的 ‘内卷化’到底是什么意思?” 澎湃, October 24, 2020, https://archive.ph/wukYK .

[27] “内卷、加速与当代中国社会的 ‘赶工游戏,’” 澎湃, December 16, 2020, https://archive.ph/KVfAq .

[28] “内卷、加速与当代中国社会的 ‘赶工游戏,’” 澎湃, December 16, 2020, https://archive.ph/KVfAq .

[29]丘小海, “内卷，一场全社会的无声悲哀,” 华为内部论坛, May 19, 2021, https://archive.ph/2bgC1 .

[30] “985废物自救小组” (established August 4, 2021) and “内卷化现象研究中心” (established January 14, 2021) are two Douban discussion groups with large followings, at https://archive.ph/XMN7e and https://archive.ph/suXMq , respectively, in which the topic of “involution” is frequently discussed. See also 刀说话, “为什么会有 ‘985废物’？‘教育内卷,’ 侵蚀了育人的内在逻辑,” Sohu.com, February 6, 2021, https://archive.ph/MZVZ .K . 

[31] “关于《双减》的三点认识—写在《双减》意见出台一周年之际,” Sohu.com, July 4, 2021, https://archive.ph/z7oi1 .

[32] 云鹏, “手机市场陷入内卷战,” 虎嗅, March 22, 2021, https://archive.ph/ncJBl .

[33]胡也远, “监管：快递业反内卷！价格战彻底落幕，快递员注定被牺牲,” December 9, 2021, https://archive.ph/Pi3XS .

[34] 奇偶派,“光伏的2023，一个有关内卷与出清的故事,”界面新闻, December 26, 2023, https://archive.ph/3pAjp . 

[35] 李延安, “价格战、内卷、争论、洗牌…… 2023汽车市场十大关键词出炉,” 腾讯新闻, December 27, 2023, https://archive.ph/nDAVt .

[36] 乔瑞庆, “综合整治 ‘内卷式’竞争 营造良好发展环境,” 中国经济网, December 21, 2024, https://archive.ph/XnwAV . This specific formulation was later repeated in the pages of People’s Daily in the context of enumerating the harm of “involutionary competition” at all levels (micro-, meso-, and macro-) of firms. 李扬, 王树华, “有效防止‘内卷式’ 竞争（专题深思）,” 人民日报, July 31, 2025, https://archive.ph/Y4Dya . 

[37] 新华社, “中央经济工作会议在北京举行 习近平发表重要讲话,” December 12, 2024, https://archive.ph/ZP6wx .

[38] NDRC, “关于印发《全国统一大市场建设指引(试行)》的通知,” January 7, 2025, https://archive.ph/yOK4k ; NDRC, “国家发展改革委专题新闻发布会 介绍深入推进全国统一大市场建设有关情况,” January 8, 2025, https://archive.ph/rylWM ; SAMR, “市场监管总局召开2025年价格监督检查和反不正当竞争工作座谈会,” February 28, 2025, https://archive.ph/LvoXA .

[39] Luna Sun, “At ‘Two Sessions,’ China Takes Aim at an Insidious Economic Foe: ‘Neijuan,’” South China Morning Post, March 5, 2025, https://archive.ph/N0hgl .

[40] 新华社, “李强在政府工作报告中提出，推动标志性改革举措加快落地，更好发挥经济体制改革牵引作用,” March 5, 2025, https://archive.ph/2MixY .

[41] 新华社, “中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议,” October 28. 2025, https://archive.ph/tJcSi .

[42] 新华社, “中共中央 国务院关于加快建设全国统一大市场的意见,” April 10, 2022, https://archive.ph/jNbgd ; although there were clear precursors to this proposal. The 2013 Third Plenum’s “中共中央关于全面深化改革若干重大问题的决定” called for the construction of “a unified, open, competitive market system” (建设统一开放、竞争有序的市场体系), November 15, 2013, https://archive.ph/hs5gH . 

[43] The phrases “统一大市场” and “全国统一大市场” were treated as equivalent for the purposes of arriving at a collective total, with commentaries appearing on June 6, June 29, July 1, July 11, and July 23 invoking the term “unified national market” at least once.

[44] 求是网评论员, “‘内卷式’ 竞争怎么看、怎么办,” 求实, June 6, 2025, https://archive.ph/HtxD5 .

[45] 金社平, “在破除 ‘内卷式’竞争中实现高质量发展,” 求实, June 29, 2025, https://archive.ph/NhXip .

[46] 巨力, “深刻认识和综合整治‘内卷式’竞争,” 求实, July 1, 2025, https://archive.ph/vSwPx .

[47]求是网评论员, “如何有效整治‘内卷式’ 竞争？” 求实, July 11, 2025, https://archive.ph/4R1AR ; 曾敏, “综合整治 ‘内卷式’ 竞争,” 求实, July 23, 2025, https://archive.ph/J2yP5 .

[48]习近平, “纵深推进全国统一大市场建设,” 求实, September 15, 2025, https://archive.ph/DURAd .

[49] 人民网, “三中全会公报：建立城乡统一的建设用地市场,” November 12, 2013, https://archive.ph/PRDya .

[50]中央政府门户网站, “习近平关于全面深化改革若干重大问题的决定的说明,” November 15, 2013, https://archive.ph/Zc4gX .

[51] 丁一凡, “全国统一大市场是回归计划经济？有人存心歪曲解读,” 澎湃, April 18, 2022, https://archive.ph/Dgo0y .

[52] 黄丽玲, “中国急推 ‘全国统一大市场’：为内循环打通堵点还是方便既得利益者垄断资源?” VOA, January 16, 2025, https://archive.ph/zFrDo .

[53] Perhaps the first use of the term with respect to post-Mao China is Suisheng Zhao, “A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31, no. 3 (1998): 287–302.

[54] Zhao Dingxin, “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3 (November 2009): 416.

[55] 邓海建, “ ‘强信心,’唱响中国经济光明论,” 光明日报, December 14, 2023, https://archive.ph/R5ZOy ; See also Patricia M. Thornton, “From ‘Singing Bright Prospects’ to ‘Traversing History’s Garbage Time’: China Struggles with Slowing Growth,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 82 (December 2024), https://www.prcleader.org/post/from-singing-bright-prospects-to-traversing-history-s-garbage-time-china-struggles-with-slowin .

[56] See习近平, “适应、把握、引领经济发展新常态（一）” and “适应、把握、引领经济发展新常态（二）,” 中共中央宣传部主管, 学习强国, https://archive.ph/xQ7yf and https://archive.ph/qfLo2 , respectively.

[57] Manfred Elfstrom and Xiaojun Li, “Propaganda and Blame Attribution during Economic

Downturns: Evidence from China,” Studies in Comparative International Development, February 21, 2025, at

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-025-09466-2 .

[58] 国务院通报, “公平竞争审查条例,” May 11, 2024, https://archive.ph/8A24a .

[59] 中华人民共和国最高人民检察院, “中华人民共和国反不正当竞争法,” June 27, 2025, https://archive.ph/he5VY .

[60] For example, in the solar panel/solar cell industry, the 工业和信息化部办公厅, 工业和信息化部办公厅关于印发光伏产业标准体系建设指南（2024版）的通知, August 24, 2024, https://archive.ph/s5kbM ; for online trading platforms, see 国家市场监督管理总局,《网络交易平台收费行为合规指南》面向社会征求意见, May 26, 2025, https://archive.ph/WyN6s .  

[61] 工业和信息化部办公厅, “关于暂停钢铁产能置换工作的通知,” August 22, 2024, https://archive.ph/UfHR9 ; and 公开征求对光伏制造行业规范条件及公告管理办法（征求意见稿）的意见, July 9, 2024, https://archive.ph/DYy5W .

Photo credit: Brücke-Osteuropa, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons