Word of the Week: Huminerals (人矿 rén kuàng)

The brand new phrase “humineral” (人矿 rén kuàng) has taken the Chinese language web by storm and is now a delicate phrase topic to censorship. First launched in a now-censored Zhihu put up on January 2, 2023, “humineral”—a portmanteau of 人 rén (“particular person”) and 矿 kuàng (“ore,” “mineral deposit,” or “mine”) within the unique Chinese language—describes an individual relentlessly exploited by society till they’re finally discarded on the refuse pile. The unique Zhihu put up elucidated 10 tenets of the “humineral,” three of which CDT has translated beneath: 

1. Huminerals: You’re a useful resource, not a protagonist. You’re a means, not an finish. Your life’s work will go in the direction of the success of others as an alternative of the pursuit of your individual needs.

2. The lifetime of a humineral will be divided into three phases: extraction, exploitation, and slag elimination. Funding in your schooling over your first decade or so is oriented at extracting your potential—turning you into usable ore. The center a long time are a strategy of exploitation and consumption. If you’re lastly ineffective, they’ll use the least polluting technique potential to eliminate you.

8. Huminerals energy the motors that flip the wheels of historical past. Huminerals have few different selections: both gas historical past’s engine, or be floor beneath its wheels. After all the inverse is true. If huminerals had been to cease propelling historical past, then these different huminerals who abstained wouldn’t be crushed. But there are all the time huminerals who see extra worth in a lifetime of being gas than to threat being flattened.  [Chinese]

“Humineral” drew instant comparisons to “beasts of burden” and “reduce chives,” each of which have develop into well-liked self-referential slang for Chinese language netizens who really feel exploited by the system. A preferred joke about “huminerals” holds that one of the best assets to use are “Saudi oil, Australian iron, and Chinese language individuals.” “Huminerals” was quickly banned throughout the complete Chinese language web. Though it as soon as rose to  #11 on Weibo’s trending checklist, the hashtag “huminerals” (#人矿) now returns no leads to both English or Chinese language. All searches for “huminerals” on Douyin, China’s TikTok, solely return outcomes from government-affiliated accounts. Comparable searches returned no outcomes on WeChat, Zhihu, and Jinri Toutiao. The one search consequence for “humineral” on Baidu attributed the time period to former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou. 

The thought of “humineral” is intently tied to the idea of the “demographic dividend,” a technical time period for the fast financial progress that will observe a decline in a rustic’s start fee, dying fee, and ensuing change in a inhabitants’s age construction. Final 12 months, China’s inhabitants declined for the primary time because the Nice Leap Ahead. One censored essay, initially posted to Zhihu, attributed the recognition of the time period “huminerals” to “dissatisfaction with and resistance to a society that has appropriated an excessive amount of labor worth, has restricted future wealth by way of excessive housing costs, and lacks fully-developed social safety advantages.” Chinese language girls have balked at authorities efforts to induce larger start charges, refusing the federal government’s perceived effort to show them into “huminerals.”