What is Nei Juan 内卷? Weibo Posts give good explanations
Nei Juan ("内卷"), yet another popular phrase among young Chinese individuals, has gained significant attention everywhere. It's such a phenomenon that scholars are just one step behind those in online media. It seems that some online media have defined Nei Juan as involution, while others see it as the opposite of Tang Ping (my previous study on Tang Ping can be found here ). Nowadays, young Chinese use this word on a daily basis. Whenever there is any topic related to competition, there are discussions about Nei Juan, or simply the word "Juan" is used. Nevertheless, I started from scratch and did the bottom-up investigation again. Let's see what Nei Juan is about on Weibo. Because this word has been around for a very long time now, I collected posts online mentioning the phrase "Nei Juan" spanning from January to December 2023. My goal was to cover usage throughout the whole year (as far back as I could do). I did not collect data involving just th...