Chinese tech workers coined a number as shorthand for a schedule their own labor law prohibited.
The term 996 (Chinese: 996工作制) describes a work schedule running from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week, totaling seventy-two hours.1 The phrase emerged during China's tech boom in the 2010s, particularly in hubs like Beijing's Zhongguancun district, where companies including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance operated under unofficial expectations of extreme overtime. China's Labour Law limits the standard workweek to forty hours across five days, making the 996 schedule illegal on its face.
In March 2019, an anonymous protest appeared on GitHub, the global developer platform owned by Microsoft, under the name 996.ICU, a reference to the intensive care unit.2 The repository's original purpose was to list companies enforcing the schedule. It quickly became a movement. Developers created the Anti-996 Licence, which prohibited companies using the 996 system from using open source code licensed under it. Within weeks, browsers developed by Tencent, Alibaba, and other Chinese companies blocked the page.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, publicly called the 996 schedule "a huge blessing," arguing that success required extra effort and time.3 Richard Liu, founder of JD.com, described employees who resisted the schedule as "slackers." A 2013 survey cited by the state-owned People's Daily found that 98.8 percent of Chinese IT workers reported health problems.4
On August 27, 2021, China's Supreme People's Court declared the 996 schedule illegal, issuing a ruling that emphasized workers' rights to rest and vacation under national labor regulations.5 In November 2021, ByteDance formally moved away from 996 and mandated shorter working hours. The counter-movement tangping, meaning "lying flat," gained traction among younger workers who rejected the premise that longer hours were synonymous with commitment.