Thousands of Chinese are literally being worked to death. Huawei, previously seen as a model company, is now a symbol of the overwork phenomenon. One of its star employees, 25-year-old software engineer Hu Xinyu, died suddenly May 28 after nearly a month of overtime work.
At China's biggest telecoms maker, every new employee is issued with a mattress. The reason? So they can grab a nap beneath their desks, day or night, when they succumb to exhaustion from their endless working hours.
The frenetic work habits of the 40,000 employees of Huawei Technologies have become known as the "mattress culture" -- and it's a prime example of the intense pressures that kill up to one million Chinese workers every year.
Until recently, China was proud of its mattress culture. The employees of Huawei were icons of the tireless zeal that transformed China into the "workshop of the world."
Many worked for months without a day off, sleeping in their offices at night so they could keep working as soon as they awoke.
But there is mounting concern about the toll of death and illness from overwork. Experts estimate that 600,000 to one million Chinese workers are dying from it every year.
Huawei, previously seen as a model company, is now a symbol of the overwork phenomenon. One of its star employees, 25-year-old software engineer Hu Xinyu, died suddenly May 28 after nearly a month of overtime work.
He was a former athlete and sports enthusiast, yet he became so exhausted at the company that he often slept at his office instead of going home.
His death has helped ignite a national debate about the culture of excessive work. The Chinese media have documented a growing number of deaths caused by overwork, and Chinese websites and Internet forums have questioned the national economic model.
"Working is important, but it can't be more important than life," one young office worker said in a website debate about Mr. Hu's death.
Almost all sectors of Chinese society, from manual labourers to intellectuals, are prone to overwork. In the past five years, for example, 135 professors and other scholars in Beijing have died prematurely as a result of overwork, according to media reports. Their average age was just 53.
Another report concluded that the life expectancy of intellectuals in Shanghai has dropped by five years in the past decade. And a survey of 2,600 high-tech workers in Beijing found that 84 per cent were unhappy with their excessive workload and nearly 90 per cent were worried about the impact on their health.
"People are starting to look at the human cost of China's phenomenal growth rate," said Robin Munro, research director at China Labour Bulletin, a labour-rights organization based in Hong Kong.
"Many Chinese people are beginning to question whether their society is benefiting from this relentless drive for great-power status. When you have up to a million people dropping dead from overwork, it's a calamitous situation.
"These are the kinds of shocking numbers you might expect from a disease epidemic. It's an awful indictment of the work culture in China and the pressures on ordinary people."
Under Chinese law, he noted, workers are prohibited from working more than 36 hours of overtime a month. Yet this limit is routinely exceeded in most export-oriented manufacturing industries.
"It's the mentality of a slave-labour camp," Mr. Munro said. "The entire work culture is distorted. There's so much emphasis on making money in China, and working extraordinary hours is seen as the way to do it."
Even the state-owned propaganda newspaper, People's Daily, has criticized the amount of overwork, which it blames partly on the rising unemployment rate and the 14 million jobless people in the country.
"With the growing numbers of people ready to take their places, few workers are willing to turn down overtime," the newspaper said in an editorial last month.
One of the most poignant cases was the story of Gan Hongying, a 35-year-old worker in a garment factory in southern China.
Desperate to raise money for her husband and two young children, she worked 22 hours of overtime in a four-day period this spring. She began to complain of dizziness and headaches, and she talked constantly of how she needed to sleep.
On May 30, after more than 54 hours of work over four days, she died suddenly. Her last words to her sister were: "I am so tired. Give me the key to your home, I want to have a rest."
After her death, a local newspaper investigated and found that the garment factory had routinely forced its employees to work overtime.
If the workers failed to finish their orders, the factory gate was sometimes locked to keep them inside, and they were threatened with a loss of pay.
The investigation found that 70 per cent of factories in the Pearl River delta of southern China, where Ms. Gan worked, had required its employees to work more than the legal maximum of overtime every week.
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