When Zhang Tian saw the term "company night owl" on the Internet it struck him as a fitting epithet for him and his work colleagues.

Zhang Tian works for a private advertising company in Guangzhou specializing in computer graphic design. His boss angles for advertisement design orders and passes to them on his staff of six, of whom Zhang Tian is one. Zhang and his colleagues work all hours in order to keep ahead of a continuous stream of work.

"I created a record by not leaving the office for three months" says Zhang Tian, wryly, explaining, "Working several consecutive weeks is nothing out of the ordinary for my colleagues and me. When business is brisk we simply work, eat and sleep. Fun or relaxation just doesn't enter into the equation."

Zhang Tian's boss is conscious of the importance of interpersonal staff relations. He employs an onsite chef to make soup for employees when they are obliged to work around the clock. "Our boss treats us fairly in terms of salary and benefits. We work hard, but our wages are much higher than our counterparts in state-owned enterprises whose workload is far less demanding. Higher pay makes working overtime worthwhile," says Zhang Tian philosophically.

The Chinese government stipulates a standard 40-hour 5-day working week. Article 41 of the Labor Law states that on the occasions when the needs of production demand it, and after due consultation with the relevant Trade Union, employees may work one to a maximum three hours of overtime per day. In extreme circumstances, a maximum 36 hours per week of overtime is allowed, on the condition that employees' health is not endangered. But this stipulation does not apply to enterprises whose working hours are not fixed.

Zhang Tian's is such a company. As during the excessive hours he and his colleagues spend at the office they are not working on a clock-on/off basis, his boss is not violating the Labor Law.

That many offices these days are equipped with beds indicates that company night owls are on the increase. Many workers required to work overtime choose to sleep at the office in order to get an early start the following day.

Company night owls are generally white collars between the ages of 25 and 45. They work in IT research and development, advertising design, media communication, professional training, and enterprise management. "The heavier the workload, the higher the remuneration" is the principle on which they operate. Much of the pressure they work under is self-imposed, and once they adapt to it, working overtime becomes a matter of personal choice. In a recent survey of work-obsessed professionals, 78 percent said that their ultimate aim is to get ahead. But if achieving this aim means sacrificing relaxation and recreation in the interests of beating rivals in the career arena, it would seem that all operate under the common handicap of a semi-permanent state of exhaustion.

There are other reasons for the company night owl phenomenon. To recent graduates, particularly those that have come to a new city to work, the office is their only source of social interaction. They are in the double-bind situation of being addicted to the place that deprives them of the chance to build a social life outside of work. There are also the new recruits that forgo nightlife in bars, restaurants and shows because they prefer to spend their hard earned cash on more tangible items, such as house purchases or rent, cars or commuting expenses and mobile phones.

Is, then, the company night owl syndrome an insidious phenomenon or simply a necessary aspect of economic progress? Gao Li, manager of an auto accessories company in Shanghai, has no problem with it. She sees her relationship with her company as one that provides her with two homes. She spends five days (and nights) at a rented apartment she has rented near her company -- her workaday home -- and weekends at her own privately purchased residence that she treats as a "holiday" home.

In one survey, respondents born in the mid-1970s concurred with the concept of the company as a home. But those that were born in the 1980s were in favor of working to live, rather than sacrificing all life's pleasures for a successful career. To them the ideal is a healthy balance between work and leisure pursuits.

In the early days of New China, state-owned enterprises were responsible for their employees' welfare from "birth to old age." In return for being "masters of the country," employees were expected to "love the factory as if it were one's own household," and strive to create wealth for the enterprise and the country. Following disintegration of the original system of social security, enterprises did a complete turnabout from being responsible for their employees' basic needs to negating all worker responsibility. During the initial period of reform and opening-up small privately owned enterprises sprung up whose employees worked long hours under bad conditions for low wages. This resulted in large staff turnovers that caused social tension and made production targets difficult to achieve.

Many entrepreneurs now perceive their enterprises not merely as places in which to labor, but also centers of communication. This could be construed as an affect of the corporate social responsibility concept currently embraced by many Chinese enterprises. Zhang Tian's boss believes that even if a company does not offer particularly high salaries, it can compensate its employees by promoting an atmosphere of camaraderie, so maintaining staff morale and company stability.

But so-called company night owls are asking for trouble, as regards their mental and physical health, in the long term. Continuous work in an enclosed office and lack of physical exercise is detrimental to health, according to one expert in occupational disease. And confining workers to the office, where their interaction is confined solely to a small group of colleagues, inevitably limits a company's scope of innovation. The most sobering aspect of this workaholic trend, however, is that of the deaths caused by overwork that have recently occurred.

China's company night owls may be said to be the result of inadequate self-adjustment to the demands of rapid economic development. There is no denying that hard work is necessary if China's ascent within the international market is to be maintained. But as Professor Wang Qiyan, director of the Leisure Economy Research Center of Renmin University says, "Everyone that works owes themself a happy life." Or as they say in the West, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."