A word coined by an American anthropologist in 1963 became China's top buzzword in 2020.
内卷 (nèijuǎn) is composed of two Chinese characters: 内 (inside) and 卷 (to roll or curl). The compound translates literally as "to curl inwards."1 It is a calque of the English word involution, a sociological concept coined by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1963 book Agricultural Involution, where he described Indonesian rice farmers laboring harder each year without any increase in productivity.2
The concept entered Chinese academia around 1986, when historian Philip Huang (黄宗智) translated Geertz's work in The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China.3 For decades it remained an academic term. In September 2020, a photograph of a Tsinghua University student typing on a laptop while riding a bicycle went viral on Chinese social media, accumulating over a billion views. The student was crowned a "卷王" (Involution King).4
The word was selected as one of China's top ten buzzwords of 2020 by the authoritative language journal Yǎowén Jiáozì (咬文嚼字).5 Xiang Biao, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University, described neijuan as "a dead loop in which people constantly force themselves," a race whose participants are not allowed to fail or exit.
By 2021, the concept had spread from universities into China's competitive tech industry, where graduates faced a saturated job market. On the interest-based platform Douban, support groups for "involution victims" attracted thousands of members. In 2022, a Chinese government white paper formally addressed "involutionary pressures," signaling official recognition of the phenomenon.6