Don’t rubbish my reign

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.