This is a forum dedicated to China, Chinese culture Chinese language, and Chinese people.
这是一个专门讨论中国、中国文化、中国语言和中国人的论坛。
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It's not.
It's prevalent in some industries (and slowly getting squashed even there because it's causing instability and the Chinese government is badly allergic to instability).
In my job, my boss doesn't allow us to work overtime except in emergencies, and then always makes up for the overtime with extra time off later.
Same reason slavery is prevalent; It's cheap, and they can get away with it.
Exactly. In the software industry in particular (an industry that worldwide seems to gather together sociopathic management) 996 culture was a huge deal. It was never a huge deal outside of that.
And the current Chinese leadership prefers to have arrogant billionaire tech heads where they belong: kneeling in service to the people. This crackdown was long overdue (because the previous leadership preferred lining his pockets with arrogant billionaire tech head bribes) and is happening with stunning rapidity.
C.f. the sheer scale of the (utterly bogus) "market value" exsanguination as the Chinese government tells stock speculators to get fucked and forces tech giants to comply with law.