China’s ruling communist party is concerned that swathes of politically apathetic millennials, branded the ‘Zen-generation’, are sauntering through life in a passive and unpatriotic way - raising doubts about their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.

In the past few months the buzzphrase ‘Zen-generation’, based on the Buddhist notion of a relaxed, Zen attitude, has gone viral online. It is used to describe young Chinese who choose easy, often low-paid careers ahead of challenging, higher-paid roles and eschew the often demanding social pressures of Chinese society.

They are generally born after 1990 and are defined by having a blasé attitude to jobs, politics, and pretty much anything else in life.

With the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) currently on a drive to shore up party loyalty, one of its media outlets, Youth.cn, has dubbed this trend a “total tragedy”. As well as a lack of political loyalty, the state-controlled newspaper The Global Times added that there was concern that such attitudes could hold back Chinese society in the long term.

Members of ‘Zen-generation’, according to the newspaper, “are seemingly fine with anything that happens to them. They are not inspired by any patriotic drive or the Party's political catchphrases. They are simply indifferent.