内卷 nèi juǎn
Endless competition that produces no real winners.
The short answer
EverydayNow commonChecked November 2026
Neijuan is fierce competition that does not move anyone forward. People put in more and more effort, and the rewards stay the same — because everyone else is putting in more too.
In a chat
- 亮亮 Liangliang
你怎么还在公司？都十点了。
Why are you still at the office? It's ten o'clock.
- 灯灯 Dengdeng
同事都没走，我也不敢走。
None of my coworkers have left, so I don't dare to leave either.
- 亮亮 Liangliang
你们公司太卷了。
Your company is way too competitive.
- 灯灯 Dengdeng
是啊，大家都在卷，工资还是一样。
Yeah. Everyone's in the race, and the pay stays the same.
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How to reply
别卷了，早点下班吧。
Stop the race and go home earlier.
我也卷不动了。
I can't keep up the race either.
When not to use it
What it means
Imagine a teacher who asks for a 5,000-word essay. One student hands in 8,000. The next term, everyone hands in 10,000 — and the teacher still gives out the same five top marks. Everyone worked harder. Nobody got further. That is neijuan.
The word applies anywhere effort is compared: exam scores, overtime hours, dating profiles, even the photos parents post of their toddlers. The signature of neijuan is that the extra effort is defensive. You are not building something; you are protecting your place in the queue.
How people use it
Neijuan works as a noun (教育内卷, “school involution”), and the single character 卷 works as a verb or adjective: 太卷了, “way too competitive”. A person who competes hardest of all is jokingly crowned 卷王, the “king of rolling”.
Say it about systems, not individuals. Calling a company or industry neijuan criticizes the rules of the game; calling a colleague 卷 teases them for playing too hard.
Where it comes from
The academic ancestor is involution, a term the anthropologist Clifford Geertz used in the 1960s for farming systems that keep absorbing labor without growing more productive. The historian Huang Zongzhi (Philip Huang) later used 内卷化 for the same pattern in the farms of rural North China.
The short form spread online from about 2018. In September 2020, photos of a Tsinghua University student who rode a bicycle while typing on a laptop made it a national word. That December, the magazine 咬文嚼字 put 内卷 on its list of the year's ten top words. Schools and news media now use it too.
In use
2 examples这个行业太卷了，每天加班到十点。
This industry is brutally competitive — people put in overtime until ten every day.
大家都在卷，你不卷就会被落下。
Everyone is grinding; if you stop, you get left behind.
The characters
Explore individuallyIndividual character meanings do not always explain the meaning of the whole word.
Sources
This guide is original Dengdeng editorial content, offered under CC BY-SA 4.0. The linked dictionary entries adapt CC-CEDICT under the same license.