A 32-year-old programmer in Guangdong, China, died after suffering a sudden respiratory and cardiac arrest, with his family attributing his death to prolonged overwork and intense job pressure.
The case has drawn widespread attention after his family revealed that work messages continued to reach his phone while he was undergoing emergency treatment, and even after he was pronounced dead.
Source: Yangtse Evening Post
Following his death, his wife applied to the local human resources and social security authorities in Guangzhou for official recognition of his death as a work-related injury.
The application has been accepted and is under review.
According to local reports, Gao Guanghui (name transliterated from Mandarin) woke up feeling unwell on the morning of 29 Nov 2025, a Saturday.
Despite his condition, he told his wife, Ms Li (surname changed), that he wanted to sit in the living room to handle some work.
At one point, Mr Gao fainted and struggled to stand.
Believing his condition was not serious, he asked Ms Li to bring his laptop with them to the hospital, thinking he would only require a short stay and would continue working.
While heading to the car park to go to the hospital, Mr Gao collapsed in the lift and began convulsing.
Neighbours assisted by calling emergency services and taking turns performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) until paramedics arrived.
Source: Yangtse Evening Post
Emergency records show that a call to China’s emergency number, 120, was received at 8.58am, with paramedics arriving at around 9.14am.
Mr Gao was transferred at 9.46am to the Second Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, where he remained in a coma.
Despite continued resuscitation efforts, he was pronounced clinically dead at 1pm.
Medical records listed the cause of death as “respiratory and cardiac arrest”, with suspected Adams-Stokes syndrome, a condition involving sudden loss of consciousness caused by abnormal heart rhythms.
His family later found that his most recent health check in June 2024 showed a normal electrocardiogram.
Reports revealed that Mr Gao had been actively working on the day he collapsed.
Browser records showed that he accessed his company’s internal office system at least five times that morning, though exact timestamps were not disclosed.
The night before, he had told his wife that he had work tasks due the next day. Records showed that four departmental tasks were scheduled to meet their deadlines on 29 Nov.
Source: NTDTV
During emergency treatment, Mr Gao was added to a new WeChat technical work group at 10.48am.
At 11.15am, while doctors were still attempting to save him, a message in the group read:
Engineer Gao, please help handle this order.
Eight hours after he was declared dead, at 9.09pm, his phone received another work-related message stating:
There’s an urgent task first thing Monday morning. Today’s inspection didn’t pass. This needs to be modified.
Mr Gao, who was promoted to department manager at the age of 28, was responsible not only for programming work but also staff management, project coordination, customer support, and some sales-related duties.
His wife said he frequently returned home late at night. CCTV footage from his residential building showed that in the week before his death, the earliest he returned home on workdays was 9.38pm, with the latest at 10.47pm.
In November, his latest recorded return was 11.58pm.
Ms Li said she often urged him to come home, receiving replies such as “just one more call”, “fixing two more bugs”, or “there’s an urgent issue”.
Text messages show Ms Li repeatedly asking Mr Gao to “come home”.
Source: Sina
Explaining his overtime, Mr Gao once told her: “As a manager, I have to be there with everyone. You wouldn’t want to be working alone on a weekend while your boss is at home enjoying life, would you?”
Ms Li believes Mr Gao fell ill and died while working and has filed for work-related injury recognition with local human resources and social security authorities.
Authorities have confirmed that the application has been accepted, though a final determination has yet to be made.
Mr Gao’s death has sparked widespread discussion online, with many netizens describing the case as reflective of the intense pressures faced by programmers and other workers in China’s technology sector.
Also read: Man in China dies after working 104 days with 1 day off; court finds employer 20% responsible
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Featured image adapted from Yangtse Evening Post and Karola G on Canva, for illustration purposes only.