Today marks the first anniversary of Trump’s return to the White House. Here are 30 ways his first year back has transformed the United States and the world. A look at the year in charts. And how his administration has reshaped health policy. 

In a large shopping mall in China’s Inner Mongolia, hundreds of people recently met for a live-streamed contest. The rules were straightforward: lie on a mattress for as long as one can without sitting up, and no bathroom breaks.

Many wore pajamas, wrapping themselves in blankets and pillows. Some brought plush toys. A stream of delivery drivers fetched takeout as the contestants ate or killed time on their phones.

Some 33 hours later, a 23-year-old man took the first prize. His answer to the toilet problem? Diapers.

As a mattress marketing schtick, the event was a wild success with more than 10 million online watchers. More than a few lamented their missed opportunity to win; they said they practically spent their days in bed anyway.

The attention then turned to the name of the contest: “Tangping,” a popular Chinese slang term that means “lying flat.”

“Finally, lying flat has become the way to win,” one person commented.

Lying flat emerged four years ago as a counterculture movement to the Chinese regime’s draconian pandemic lockdowns. Chinese youth, rejecting the grueling rat race, sought a different lifestyle: doing the bare minimum.

They have since taken it to another level. Ignoring the urging from Chinese authorities to work hard, they call themselves “rat people” and spend their days “rotting” in bed.

The days they document on Chinese social media go something like this: crawling out of bed around noon or later, showering, cooking or ordering takeout, eating while scrolling their phones, more bedtime, then more food and doomscrolling—or gaming—until the wee hours.

That’s how 25-year-old Sherry Yang has lived her life the past three years while rooming with relatives and friends.

“I don’t have any plans for the future,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s not much to look forward to.”

In interviews with The Epoch Times and in posts across the Chinese internet, a sense of gloom has been infecting China’s youth, once synonymous with hope and promise. It marks a drastic shift from a decade ago, when young people brimmed with energy, said James Wang, who graduated from college in 2017.

Fresh out of school, Wang said he and his friends chatted daily about their jobs and dreams. They traded career tips and were impatient to start businesses of their own.

“Now everything is different,” he told The Epoch Times. Gone is the talk of high aspirations; all one asks for is a regular job, and to be able to keep it, he said.

The “lying flat” trend, at odds with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s refrain to “tell China’s story well,” has become a headache for Beijing.

A day after Christmas, the country’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, issued a 13-bullet directive, banning internet celebrities from promoting the “lying flat” culture. It branded the lifestyle as among “unhealthy ideas” that “violate core socialist values.”

The state of Chinese youth has been a growing embarrassment for a regime that goes to great lengths to project strength and confidence.

In August 2023, as one in five young Chinese was unable to get a job, Beijing stopped publishing related monthly data.

Resuming five months later, officials tweaked the math. Those who are still in school no longer count, Chinese authorities said, because they should focus on studies rather than job hunting. That ruled out roughly 62 million from the calculation, including students who work on the side and others who struggle to secure work. The change yielded a lower jobless figure, which has hovered in the mid to high teens.

Cindy Zhang, 24, graduated last summer from Shandong University, a top school in eastern China. With her finance background and rich internship experience, she was confident to land something in banking or securities.

A year into job searching, her hope has dimmed. Hiring freezes are the norm, and openings are few. Among the offers available, salaries skew “ridiculously low,” she said.

“I’ve sent over 300 resumes so far, only two firms got back,” she told The Epoch Times.

She’s now selling drinks at her relative’s small storefront, making less than 100 yuan ($14.30) a day.

Faced with a scarcity of work opportunities, many young people are grabbing whatever gigs there are. Often, that means delivering takeout.

This segment has been expanding rapidly over the past few years, with 14 million drivers by July 2025, according to Chinese data aggregator QuestMobile. Around two-thirds are 35 or younger.

Among them is 24-year-old actor Shu Chen, who began night delivery runs in August after fruitlessly chasing auditions while the bills stacked up. His longest shift lasted more than 10 hours and netted him close to 200 yuan (less than $30).

Another is Ding Yuanzhao, a straight-A student who studied at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University on scholarship and later earned a Master’s degree at the University of Oxford in England.

—Eva Fu

BOOKMARKS

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) now estimates that at least 3,919 people have been killed during the recent protests against the Iranian regime, The Epoch Times’ Guy Birchall reported. While thousands of other potential deaths are being investigated, the death toll—if accurate—has already crested the totals recorded during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. 

A mother told jurors last week that she consented to breast removal surgery for her teenage daughter out of fear the girl would take her own life, The Epoch Times’ Stacy Robinson reported. The mother said that a psychologist’s warnings about her daughter’s mental state influenced her decision to consent to the surgery.

The U.S. State Department has reduced its travel advisory for Jamaica to Level 2, The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported. The reduced rating indicates a lowered risk for American citizens who want to travel to the Caribbean island nation. Previously, the department’s Level 3 advisory stated that U.S. citizens should reconsider travel to the country over crime, health care, and disasters.

The Department of Justice suggested the FBI will not investigate the shooting of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported. While polls suggest that less than one-third of Americans believe the shooting was justified, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested that the case was not “appropriate to investigate.”