China’s Overtime Culture Under Scrutiny After Tech Worker’s Death

ByteDance, operator of the TikTok short-video platform, confirmed on Wednesday that a male employee surnamed Wu had died. The employee was rushed to hospital after feeling dizzy while exercising at a gym near ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters, according to the company’s internal memos.

“We’re extremely saddened by the passing of our colleague and extend our deepest condolences to our colleague’s family and friends,” A ByteDance spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. “We will do our utmost to support our colleague’s family.”

Although the company did not disclose the cause of the 28-year-old worker’s death, news of the young man’s passing spread rapidly on Chinese social media, leading many to comment on the heavy pressures of working for China’s large tech companies.

Wu had been an image algorithm engineer in ByteDance’s video architecture department, and the young man’s passing came just two weeks after a content moderator at Chinese entertainment firm Bilibili died of a brain hemorrhage while working during the Spring Festival holiday.

Chinese social media users pointed to the two events as they reignited a debate about prolonged work hours at the country’s internet firms. While tech billionaires such as Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma and JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong once endorsed a controversial practice known as “996”—which requires people to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—employees are increasingly pushing back.

Now, under a hashtag about Wu’s death, which has been viewed more than 100 million times on China’s Twitter-equivalent Sina Weibo, internet users are calling on ByteDance to improve its treatment of workers and reduce workers’ hours. “Can we just stop this and let us go to work at normal hours?” a user asked on Weibo.

Chinese authorities have also weighed in on the topic. Last year, the Supreme People’s Court and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security warned against the prolonged work hours adopted by many of the country’s large internet corporations. The warning came after two employees at discount e-commerce site Pinduoduo died in the same year, with one woman in her early 20s collapsing while walking home from work after midnight.