Summarize this content material to 2000 phrases in 6 paragraphs HONG KONG — A prime public relations govt from Chinese language expertise agency Baidu apologized Thursday after she made feedback in a sequence of movies that critics stated glorified a tradition of overwork.Baidu’s head of communications, Qu Jing, drew a public outcry in China after she implied within the movies that she was not involved about her staff as she was “not their mother” and stated she solely cared about outcomes. She additionally stated that the connection between her and her subordinates was purely an “employer-employee relationship.”The backlash was swift, with many on social media platforms equivalent to Weibo criticizing Qu as missing empathy.Qu posted an apology Thursday on her non-public WeChat account, the place she “sincerely apologized to all netizens” and clarified that she had not sought Baidu’s permission earlier than posting the movies.Qu stated that her brief movies didn’t characterize Baidu’s stance. Baidu operates China’s dominant search engine in addition to the Ernie bot, a synthetic intelligence service much like ChatGPT.“Most of the criticisms are very pertinent, I’m reflecting deeply and humbly settle for them,” she stated. “There are numerous inappropriate (issues stated) within the video that precipitated exterior misunderstandings in regards to the firm’s values and company tradition, inflicting severe hurt. I sincerely apologize.”Qu additionally pledged to enhance her communication and administration fashion and care extra for her colleagues.Baidu didn’t instantly remark.The movies, which have since been taken down, got here at a time when many younger individuals in China are pushing again in opposition to a tradition of competitors and grueling hours within the office.Qu obtained criticism for a variety of topics she talked about within the sequence of brief movies on Douyin, the Chinese language equal of TikTok.Within the sequence, she introduced up an incident of sure staff who despatched lots of of grievance letters in opposition to her to the workplace, and threatened to break their careers by guaranteeing that they may by no means once more discover a job within the trade.In one of many movies, she criticized an worker who refused to go on a 50-day enterprise journey through the Covid-19 pandemic. China had applied strict journey restrictions that at instances included weeks of quarantine for journey even inside the nation.“Why ought to I take into accounts my worker’s household? I’m not her mother-in regulation,” Qu stated, including that if staff refused to go on such enterprise journeys then they’d not get wage raises or job promotions.Chinese language expertise corporations have lengthy been criticized for his or her lengthy working hours.A public debate was set off in recent times over the “996” work tradition, the place staff in expertise corporations had been anticipated to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week. The problem was additionally spotlighted after the deaths of two staff of Chinese language e-commerce agency Pinduoduo, certainly one of whom collapsed all of the sudden on the road on her method dwelling from work.Jack Ma, founding father of Alibaba, additionally confronted criticism in 2019 for endorsing the 12-hour workday tradition, saying that those that loved their work wouldn’t discover the “996” observe to be an issue.