1 Jul, 2014
Why China’s ‘admirable workers’ are dying at their desks – Sydney Morning Herald
Chinese banking regulator Li Jianhua literally worked himself to death. After 26 years of “always putting the cause of the party and the people” first, his employer said this month, the 48-year-old official died rushing to finish a report before the sun came up.
China is facing an epidemic of overwork, to hear the state-controlled press and Chinese social media tell it. About 600,000 Chinese a year die from working too hard, according to the China Youth Daily. China Radio International in April reported a toll of 1,600 every day.
Microblogging website Weibo is filled with complaints about stressed-out lives and chatter about reports of others, young and old, worked to death: a 24-year-old junior employee at Ogilvy Public Relations, a 25-year-old auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers; one of the chief designers of China’s next-generation fighter planes at state-run AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Corp.
Read the rest: Why China’s ‘admirable workers’ are dying at their desks.
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