A senior economic scholar and member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has put long working hours back on the national agenda, framing them as an economic as well as social problem. Lu Ming, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Antai College of Economics and Management, proposed tightening China's labor rules and enforcement at this year's Two Sessions after official data showed average weekly working time for enterprise employees reached 48.6 hours in 2025.
Lu's intervention links what many Chinese call "involution"—an arms race of unpaid overtime and exhausting internal competition—to a suite of negative outcomes: poorer health, depressed service consumption, lower fertility intentions and a weakening of creative capacity. The suggestion points to a legal mismatch: China's Labour Law sets a 44‑hour standard week while the International Labour Organization regards 48 hours or more as excessive, a threshold that recent national averages have exceeded.
His recommendations are legal and procedural. They include revising specifics of the Labour Law on normal hours, cumulative overtime caps and overtime pay, strengthening inspection and penalties, and creating confidential channels for workers to report violations. To ease the common evidentiary burden that prevents workplace complaints, Lu urged courts and arbitrators to accept digital proxies—late‑night lighting, electricity meters and other signals—as auxiliary proof of overtime and to clarify rules around "disguised" or coerced overtime.
The proposal extends beyond law to social norms and institutional practice. Lu urges mainstream and social media to promote examples of efficient, balanced workplaces; asks industry associations and trade unions to produce sectoral time‑management standards; and calls on government departments and state‑owned enterprises to lead by strictly enforcing hours and including employees' rest and health in official performance reviews.
Technology and management reform round out the plan. Lu advocates faster digitalisation and adoption of AI and automation to remove repetitive, low‑value tasks, plus wider use of outcome‑based assessment and flexible working where feasible. He also recommends incentives for firms to invest in on‑the‑job retraining so workers can move away from routine roles that fuel the overtime treadmill.
Implementation faces hurdles. Employers will resist higher compliance costs, small and medium enterprises may struggle to adapt, and manufacturers tied to volatile global supply chains often need shift flexibility that clashes with rigid hour caps. Yet if China can curb excessive work time and raise productivity through better management and technology, the economy could see a reallocation of time toward consumption, creativity and family life—outcomes that would help address weak domestic demand and demographic pressures—but success will require coordinated legal, fiscal and cultural measures.