- China's internet is intensely discussing the prospect of increasing baseline PTO to more than five days.
- The norm in China is to only vacation during pre-defined weeks blocked off by your employer.
A Hong Kong politician's recent commentary on paid time off has sparked a debate in China on annual leave — or rather, the lack of it.
Kenneth Fok, a Hong Kong-based member of China's National People's Congress, told state media on Monday that the country should gradually increase paid time off for young workers, giving them one extra day of entitled leave for every year of work experience they have.
Current laws give employees five days of annual paid time off, which increases to 10 days after they have worked 10 years, and 15 days if they have worked for 20 years or more.
Fok's proposal would let young workers scale their annual leave from five to 10 days until they hit the 10-year mark.
"The five-day statutory annual leave cannot ensure they have adequate rest. If things go on like this, it will impact the public's spiritual quality, overall style, society's level of grit," Fok said, per China Youth Daily, a party-run daily.
Fok said he would submit his proposal to the Two Sessions, an annual meeting of China's top decision-making bodies that started on Tuesday in Beijing.
His suggestion sparked hopes on Weibo, China's version of X, that the country might soon align with international paid leave standards. The International Labor Organization recommends three weeks of paid annual leave.
People in China typically vacation during public holidays, with companies often blocking off entire weeks around long weekends. However, the practice is often controversial because employees are expected to compensate for lost productivity by working overtime or during weekends leading up to their companywide holidays.
Annual vacation days would allow workers to rest or travel at a time they choose.
The hype intensified on Tuesday when China Youth Daily published a follow-up piece to Fok's interview, saying it is "necessary to protect vacation rights."
"Many people can only swallow their anger and silently endure the pressure and injury at work even though they know that their rights and interests have been damaged," it said.
The topic went viral, charting to the top of Weibo's hot search list with 110 million views, per data seen by Business Insider.
"The widespread response to this shows how we've suffered under the 996 schedule," wrote one blogger. "How many office workers have not enjoyed a weekend off? How many laborers have yet to receive all their overtime pay? How many people have already forgotten what annual leave is?"
'I can't even get a two-day break every week'
The concept of 996, popularized by figures like Alibaba founder Jack Ma, obligates employees to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six days a week — an overtime work culture that was for a time celebrated as a driver of Chinese growth but received pushback from disgruntled youth.
The online debate soon hinged on whether bosses even allowed young employees to take mandatory leave days.
"We can't even enforce the labor law, so increasing annual leave directly is simply wishful thinking," wrote one blogger. "When we solve the issue of working overtime without compensation and not adjusting holidays, then there will be some hope."
Shanghai-based outlet The Paper ran an informal poll on Tuesday, asking if its readers felt they could take vacation days. By Wednesday afternoon, fewer than half of the poll's 7,200 respondents said they took any annual leave.
"I can't even get a two-day break every week. I would have some nerve to take a day of annual leave," said one top comment.
Only about 60% of Chinese workers take any of their mandatory paid time off, according to a 2020 survey of 60 cities by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. The data is regularly cited by the ministry, which conducted a similar study in 2015.
Fok's argument for increasing paid time off comes as China is starting to reconsider conditions for younger workers as the country's population ages.
China's recently declining birthrate — a reversal of its decades of booming growth — has given way to fears that its dwindling workforce cannot support a burgeoning number of retirees.
Fok wrote in a follow-up post on Weibo that allowing young Chinese workers to go on vacation would also allow them to spend more on travel, boosting the local economy,
By comparison, the US is one of the few countries not to enforce an annual paid leave structure. However, around 80% of its employees in the private sector have access to paid leave, per government statistics last updated in September 2023.
Slightly more than half of US workers who have paid leave said they take the full number of days they earn, per a February 2023 survey of 5,188 American adults by the Pew Research Center.