Recently, a GitHub project went wild that had nothing to do with programming, but everything to do with all programmers in China: 996.ICU, a combination of 996 and ICU (or Intensive Care Unit).

The three digits 996 refer to an unofficial working schedule that runs from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week; that is, a working week of 60 hours or more.

Just when the public controversy over 996.ICU had calmed, statements made by the founders of two tech giants, Alibaba's Jack Ma and JD.com's Richard Liu, pushed it to fever pitch.

Though neither of them said they would enforce 996, Ma referred to the ability to work 996 as "a blessing" while Liu made the remark that "each JD.com employee should possess the ambitious spirit", comments that clearly equate with the sentiment of 996 without going so far as to impose it onto their workforces. Furthermore, and offering themselves up as examples, they urged young men and women to take advantage of their youthful energy to work hard to achieve great things.

The unanimous, if not conspired, statements may be considered a response to the 996.ICU movement, an attempt to rally their demoralized employees ahead of aggressive layoff and employee benefit-cutting plans.

Such outspoken advocacy for 996 by Ma, China's godfather of entrepreneurs and the internet, will inevitably have a knock-on effect across the country that will re-energize and re-popularize the notion of 996 while further promoting a collective disregard of China's Labour Law that clearly stipulates a maximum 8-hour day and 40-hour week.

It is important to note that the reason 996 has gone viral is because, to borrow the famous words of Cixin Liu in his classic sci-fi trilogyThe Three-Body Problem, a "dimensional reductive strike" against companies which resist it. The white list of 955.WLB (work-life balance) companies is mostly comprised of foreign internet firms whose sluggish performances in China are often attributed to their lack of a ruthless "wolf spirit", something possessed in abundance by their Chinese counterparts.

Indeed, the recent choice of JD.com to cancel a basic salary and reduce the company's contribution to the provident fund of its delivery staff (who boss Richard Liu refers to as 'buddies') was the result of this dimensional reduction brought on by 996 that threatens a changing of the rules. The company originally hoped to build a protective ‘moat’ of quality logistics services, yet finally failed to protect itself once confronted with the competition of social logistics and the impact on the invisible unemployment of China's real economy.

You may be shocked at the ridiculousness of such accomplished entrepreneurs as Ma and Liu evaluating employees based on working hours alone, and not performance, at them failing to realize that tactical diligence always trumps careless strategy, or that innovation arises from motivation and a freer working environment, in stark contrast to 996 which serves instead to deprive employees of any life at all outside of the workplace.

In fact, advocating 996 is nothing but a disguised way to cut labor costs, in turn reflecting the end of the boom period of innovation for excessively creative (or re-creative, since so many things has been 're-invented' again and again) internet companies in China. Doubtlessly, the popularization of 996 only serves to drag down overall employment, lower average working incomes and further demotivate young couples from having children, thus making problems of overcapacity and under-consumption in the Chinese economy even more severe.

In China, 996 has become an embodiment of a political correctness and "youth bias" prevalent among internet companies in China. The excessive innovations that incline towards the young generation, the mainstay of the consumption economy, but tend to ignore the experiences of middle-aged and older Chinese, has now become a norm.

However, with the fading of demographic dividends, no amount of consumerist propaganda will suffice to motivate the tens of millions of debt-ridden youth trapped in the quagmire of borrowing and consumption to support the rapid growth and over-innovation of the internet economy. The demographic dividends are vanishing fast enough; now the popularization of 996 will only further contribute to an even lower birth rate in the country.

What's more, with the pension pool running short earlier than anticipated, the increasingly sluggish consumption of those born in the 1980s and 1990s will only intensify. This 'overdraft' of over-work and over-consumption is now contributing to an overdraft on the future of the Chinese economy itself.

In fact, this "fight-while-you-can" philosophy of Ma is an unsustainable drain on the surplus value of workers, whether from the perspective of physical plausibility, self-improvement or intergenerational continuity.