China’s newest wave of mass pessimism about the economy and society has spawned the buzzword “the garbage time of history.” The metaphor describing the final, meaningless minutes of a lost sports game aptly describes stagnation and hopelessness under paramount leader Xi Jinping, disaffected netizens say. Still battling to squelch other caustic viral terms -- “lying flat” to shun a competitive society, and “running” to a foreign country -- authorities are trying to stop the trash talking as Xi’s Communist Party holds a major plenary meeting.
