996

The term emerged from China's technology sector during the 2010s, as companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and Huawei pursued rapid expansion through a workforce culture that treated extreme hours as both expected and unspoken. The schedule was never official company policy. It functioned instead as an unwritten rule, enforced through peer pressure, taxi reimbursements for employees who stayed past midnight, and promotion structures that rewarded visible presence over measurable output. China's labor law caps the standard workweek at eight hours per day and forty-four hours per week, making the 996 schedule illegal on its face.

In September 2016, the classified advertising website 58.com publicly adopted the 996 schedule, drawing widespread criticism. In March 2019, the protest escalated when an anonymous developer created the 996.ICU repository on GitHub, documenting companies that enforced the practice. The repository attracted global attention and was rapidly blocked by multiple Chinese-made browsers. Alibaba founder Jack Ma publicly stated that workers should consider 996 "a huge blessing," while JD.com founder Richard Liu said that employees who lacked the drive for such hours were not welcome.

A 2013 survey reported by China's state-owned People's Daily found that 98.8 percent of Chinese IT workers reported health problems. Overwork deaths and suicides connected to extreme schedules accumulated across the industry over the following years. In November 2021, ByteDance formally moved away from the 996 schedule after the sudden death of a twenty-eight-year-old employee drew scrutiny.

On August 27, 2021, China's Supreme People's Court ruled the 996 work schedule illegal. Enforcement remains inconsistent, and scholars have questioned whether the ruling will produce lasting change in practice. A variant known as 007, meaning midnight to midnight, seven days a week on a rotational basis, has been reported at some companies in the high-technology sector.