China's state security authority on Tuesday exposed anti-China forces who have been fabricating narratives such as "class solidification" and that "hard work is useless," laying bare overseas organization-backed anti-China forces of funding internet influencers and spreading "lying-flat" content to lure Chinese youth to "let it rot" and to erode their mindset.

According to an article released via public WeChat account of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), as defeatist slogans like "lie flat if you can't keep up with the competition" and "giving up is optimal" spread online, Chinese youth risk growing disoriented. The MSS urged Chinese youth to stay vigilant against hidden narrative traps in such messaging.

According to the MSS, Chinese youth are the future of the nation and are also a primary target of ideological infiltration by overseas anti-China hostile forces. In recent years, overseas anti-China forces have used online platforms to amplify public anxiety, distort interpretations of development issues, and continuously spread pessimistic narratives about effort and personal development. They attempt to escalate individual difficulties into group antagonism by manufacturing negative emotions, subtly misleading and manipulating Chinese youth. By doing so, they seek to erode Chinese youth's belief in striving and are even undermining the value foundations of society.

The state security authority found that a certain overseas organization had funded various anti-China media outlets and think tanks, concocting narratives such as "struggle equals being exploited" and "class solidification means hard work is useless." It also found another overseas organization had heavily financed "lying-flat influencers," mass-producing short videos promoting ideas like "lying flat is justice" and "resisting rat race equals resisting exploitation," and systematically carrying out "lying-flat brainwashing."

The MSS said that it is ironic that while anti-China forces are promoting "lying-flat" narratives toward Chinese youth, certain countries in recent years have been introducing aggressive economy-stimulating bills and conducting global talent recruitment. This shows that they never truly endorse "lying flat"; rather, they only want Chinese youth to "lie flat," so that China's development dividends, strategic opportunities and national future could be effectively surrendered.

The MSS said that rational judgment and independent thinking have become increasingly valuable amid the flood of today's "information explosion." The state security authority urged young people to critically assess online negative information, warning against exaggeration, bias, and "information cocoons," and calling for independent judgment amid various opinions.

"There have been precedents of external forces attempting to lure young people into a culture of excessive indulgence and moral erosion, and to reshape their once positive and aspirational mindset through public opinion campaigns. This constitutes a form of cognitive warfare, aimed at fostering a prevailing mindset among young people and embedding passive or defeatist attitudes across one or even two generations, thereby exerting a profound impact on a country's development," Li Wei, a research fellow and security expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

As China's development has raised people's living standards, it has also created conditions in which some younger individuals may adopt a "lying flat" mindset, providing an opening for such narratives to take hold. If this way of thinking spreads among the youth, it could influence the next generation and perpetuate this social pattern, thereby achieving the aim of weakening us, Li said.