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China’s Street Vendor Push Ignites a Debate: How Rich Is It?
The premier’s suggestion to empower a “stall economy” and focus on low-income workers leads some to ask whether the world’s No. 2 economy is as prosperous as it seems.
Credit...Jialun Deng
By Li Yuan
Xie Yiyi lost her job last Friday, making the 22-year-old Beijing resident one of millions of young people in China left unmoored and shaken by the coronavirus.
So that same day, heeding the advice of one of China’s top leaders, she decided to open a barbecue stall.
Many people in China would say selling spicy mutton skewers was a step down for an American-educated young person like Ms. Xie — or, really, for anybody in the world’s second-largest economy. Street vendors are seen by many Chinese people as embarrassing eyesores from the country’s past, when it was still emerging from extreme poverty. In many Chinese cities, uniformed neighborhood rules enforcers called chengguan regularly evict and assault sidewalk sellers of fake jewelry, cheap clothes and spicy snacks.
But Li Keqiang, China’s premier, had publicly called for the country’s jobless to ignite a “stall economy” to get the country’s derailed economy back on track. In the process, he laid bare China’s diverging narratives after the coronavirus epidemic. Is China an increasingly middle-class country, represented by the skyscrapers and tech campuses in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen? Or is much of it still poor and backward, a country of roadside stalls in back alleys?
Ms. Xie, who graduated last year from the University of California, Irvine, knew the matter was far from settled. She loaded her digital shopping cart with a grill, charcoal, skewers and cases of Arctic Ocean, the classic Beijing orange soda, in hopes that the barbecue business could tide her over until a better job came along. But she waited to see whether Beijing city officials would go along with Mr. Li’s call before she clicked “buy.”
commentary in the official Beijing Daily newspaper ran a long list of the problems stalls could create, labeling them “unhygienic and uncivilized.”
They didn’t, in a rare sign of disagreement among Chinese officialdom. A commentary in the official Beijing Daily newspaper ran a long list of the problems stalls could create, labeling them “unhygienic and uncivilized.”
“The higher-ups are saying different things,” Ms. Xie said. “So better be cautious about placing the order.”
Mr. Li set off the conversation about China’s prosperity last month, when he held his annual news conference at the end of the country’s legislative session and directly addressed the job losses from the country’s fight against the coronavirus. He praised the young people who, in the early days of China’s emergence from the Cultural Revolution, opened tea stalls.
Then Mr. Li pointed out that some 600 million Chinese, or 43 percent of the population, earn a monthly income of only about $140. He cited the example of a migrant worker in his 50s who couldn’t find a job after working in cities for 30 years.
Underscoring his focus on China’s less successful, Mr. Li visited street vendors days later in Shandong Province. “The country is made up of the people,” he told them. “Only when the people are OK will the country be OK.”
Mr. Li’s comments defied the Communist Party’s usual narrative of untrammeled prosperity, which helped legitimize its rule. Initially, when the income figures spread through the Chinese internet, some social media users — unaware of their source — called the numbers fake and accused hostile forces of trying to undermine China’s success.
Many middle-class urban dwellers have reasons not to believe the numbers. China’s biggest cities have made it much harder for low-income, low-skilled people to live there, virtually erasing them from the official narrative. For example, the Beijing municipal government coined the term “low-end population” when it drove many of those people out three years ago by tearing down the housing, markets and restaurants where they lived and worked.
Mr. Li, who has long been overshadowed by Xi Jinping, the country’s paramount leader, is an unlikely person to poke holes in the party’s grand narrative of success. The last time Mr. Li inspired so much buzz was five years ago when he advocated innovation and entrepreneurship, helping to trigger a frenzy of investment in venture funds and start-ups.
That was when China was feeling ambitious. Now it is facing what might be its biggest challenges since the Mao era. Its economy has slowed sharply because of its coronavirus containment efforts. While the government says unemployment is at 6 percent, other estimates put it at 20 percent. Other countries are increasingly hostile, a development some Chinese elites attribute to Mr. Xi’s premature positioning of the country as a superpower.
So “stall economy” became a buzzword, and Mr. Li became the talk of the Chinese internet. Some social media users praised him for daring to speak the truth. Many said he cared about the well-being of ordinary people, a subtle dig at the rest of the party leadership, suggesting it cares more about meeting arbitrary goals and building its power abroad.
Cities rushed to lure vendors to the streets. A few even set recruiting quotas for the chengguan, meaning that the people who once harassed and beat vendors now had to support them. An economist estimated that 50 million jobs could be created if the government gave more space to the vendors and farmers selling their produce.
Chinese media chimed in with stories about street vendors who make thousands of dollars a month and can afford luxury cars. They cited famous entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, who peddled handicrafts on the street to pay the rent for his first business. Alibaba and its rival JD.com rolled out microloans and other efforts to support street vendors. Share prices of “stall economy stocks” — shopping center operators, outdoor-umbrella manufacturers and automakers making pickup trucks that can be converted into mobile stores — surged.
Image
A food stall in Beijing’s central business district.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Li’s comments also inspired gallows humor. Young professionals debated what they could sell now that their career prospects had dimmed. Maybe artisanal coffee shop from a bicycle-driven cart? Roadside legal services? Photoshopped images of Captain America peddling smartphone screen protectors, Wonder Woman pulling a cold noodle cart and President Trump selling vegetables circulated on the Chinese internet.
Then the backlash set in. Some commentaries about the income figures disappeared. On the WeChat social media platform, an article that Mr. Li wrote in 1997 about a childhood teacher was deleted for violating regulations. The stall economy stocks fell to earth.
Official media began reining in the enthusiasm. “The stall economy isn’t appropriate for first-tier cities,” said China Central Television, the state broadcaster, referring to relatively wealthy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Allowing the stall economy to make a comeback in those cities is “equivalent of going backward in decades overnight,” it wrote. “It’s a departure from high-quality growth.”
For any Chinese person who has ever been to an open market or seen street vendors bullied by local officials, it should be pretty obvious that operating a stall is a tough way to make a living. Only for those with few skills or other means to scrape by could call it an option. Even those who took the idea seriously most likely saw street vending for educated workers as only temporary, like Ms. Xie in Beijing.
But it was a necessary conversation for a country still figuring out how to provide for its people. The government set a goal of creating nine million new jobs this year, down from 11 million last year. That will not be enough for this year’s 8.7 million college graduates plus the many workers and professionals who lost jobs in the sharp economic downturn.
It also raises the question of whether China will forget again the hundreds of millions of low-wage workers who are still trying to scrape by despite their country’s wealth.
“When they need you, you’re an entrepreneur,” goes a widely circulated social media quip on the uncertainty of being a stall operator. “When they don’t need you, you will be an eyesore to the city’s appearance.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/business/china-street-vendors-stall-economy.html
The premier’s suggestion to empower a “stall economy” and focus on low-income workers leads some to ask whether the world’s No. 2 economy is as prosperous as it seems.
Credit...Jialun Deng
By Li Yuan
- June 11, 2020
Xie Yiyi lost her job last Friday, making the 22-year-old Beijing resident one of millions of young people in China left unmoored and shaken by the coronavirus.
So that same day, heeding the advice of one of China’s top leaders, she decided to open a barbecue stall.
Many people in China would say selling spicy mutton skewers was a step down for an American-educated young person like Ms. Xie — or, really, for anybody in the world’s second-largest economy. Street vendors are seen by many Chinese people as embarrassing eyesores from the country’s past, when it was still emerging from extreme poverty. In many Chinese cities, uniformed neighborhood rules enforcers called chengguan regularly evict and assault sidewalk sellers of fake jewelry, cheap clothes and spicy snacks.
But Li Keqiang, China’s premier, had publicly called for the country’s jobless to ignite a “stall economy” to get the country’s derailed economy back on track. In the process, he laid bare China’s diverging narratives after the coronavirus epidemic. Is China an increasingly middle-class country, represented by the skyscrapers and tech campuses in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen? Or is much of it still poor and backward, a country of roadside stalls in back alleys?
Ms. Xie, who graduated last year from the University of California, Irvine, knew the matter was far from settled. She loaded her digital shopping cart with a grill, charcoal, skewers and cases of Arctic Ocean, the classic Beijing orange soda, in hopes that the barbecue business could tide her over until a better job came along. But she waited to see whether Beijing city officials would go along with Mr. Li’s call before she clicked “buy.”
commentary in the official Beijing Daily newspaper ran a long list of the problems stalls could create, labeling them “unhygienic and uncivilized.”
They didn’t, in a rare sign of disagreement among Chinese officialdom. A commentary in the official Beijing Daily newspaper ran a long list of the problems stalls could create, labeling them “unhygienic and uncivilized.”
“The higher-ups are saying different things,” Ms. Xie said. “So better be cautious about placing the order.”
Mr. Li set off the conversation about China’s prosperity last month, when he held his annual news conference at the end of the country’s legislative session and directly addressed the job losses from the country’s fight against the coronavirus. He praised the young people who, in the early days of China’s emergence from the Cultural Revolution, opened tea stalls.
Then Mr. Li pointed out that some 600 million Chinese, or 43 percent of the population, earn a monthly income of only about $140. He cited the example of a migrant worker in his 50s who couldn’t find a job after working in cities for 30 years.
Underscoring his focus on China’s less successful, Mr. Li visited street vendors days later in Shandong Province. “The country is made up of the people,” he told them. “Only when the people are OK will the country be OK.”
Mr. Li’s comments defied the Communist Party’s usual narrative of untrammeled prosperity, which helped legitimize its rule. Initially, when the income figures spread through the Chinese internet, some social media users — unaware of their source — called the numbers fake and accused hostile forces of trying to undermine China’s success.
Many middle-class urban dwellers have reasons not to believe the numbers. China’s biggest cities have made it much harder for low-income, low-skilled people to live there, virtually erasing them from the official narrative. For example, the Beijing municipal government coined the term “low-end population” when it drove many of those people out three years ago by tearing down the housing, markets and restaurants where they lived and worked.
Mr. Li, who has long been overshadowed by Xi Jinping, the country’s paramount leader, is an unlikely person to poke holes in the party’s grand narrative of success. The last time Mr. Li inspired so much buzz was five years ago when he advocated innovation and entrepreneurship, helping to trigger a frenzy of investment in venture funds and start-ups.
That was when China was feeling ambitious. Now it is facing what might be its biggest challenges since the Mao era. Its economy has slowed sharply because of its coronavirus containment efforts. While the government says unemployment is at 6 percent, other estimates put it at 20 percent. Other countries are increasingly hostile, a development some Chinese elites attribute to Mr. Xi’s premature positioning of the country as a superpower.
So “stall economy” became a buzzword, and Mr. Li became the talk of the Chinese internet. Some social media users praised him for daring to speak the truth. Many said he cared about the well-being of ordinary people, a subtle dig at the rest of the party leadership, suggesting it cares more about meeting arbitrary goals and building its power abroad.
Cities rushed to lure vendors to the streets. A few even set recruiting quotas for the chengguan, meaning that the people who once harassed and beat vendors now had to support them. An economist estimated that 50 million jobs could be created if the government gave more space to the vendors and farmers selling their produce.
Chinese media chimed in with stories about street vendors who make thousands of dollars a month and can afford luxury cars. They cited famous entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, who peddled handicrafts on the street to pay the rent for his first business. Alibaba and its rival JD.com rolled out microloans and other efforts to support street vendors. Share prices of “stall economy stocks” — shopping center operators, outdoor-umbrella manufacturers and automakers making pickup trucks that can be converted into mobile stores — surged.
Image
A food stall in Beijing’s central business district.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Li’s comments also inspired gallows humor. Young professionals debated what they could sell now that their career prospects had dimmed. Maybe artisanal coffee shop from a bicycle-driven cart? Roadside legal services? Photoshopped images of Captain America peddling smartphone screen protectors, Wonder Woman pulling a cold noodle cart and President Trump selling vegetables circulated on the Chinese internet.
Then the backlash set in. Some commentaries about the income figures disappeared. On the WeChat social media platform, an article that Mr. Li wrote in 1997 about a childhood teacher was deleted for violating regulations. The stall economy stocks fell to earth.
Official media began reining in the enthusiasm. “The stall economy isn’t appropriate for first-tier cities,” said China Central Television, the state broadcaster, referring to relatively wealthy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Allowing the stall economy to make a comeback in those cities is “equivalent of going backward in decades overnight,” it wrote. “It’s a departure from high-quality growth.”
For any Chinese person who has ever been to an open market or seen street vendors bullied by local officials, it should be pretty obvious that operating a stall is a tough way to make a living. Only for those with few skills or other means to scrape by could call it an option. Even those who took the idea seriously most likely saw street vending for educated workers as only temporary, like Ms. Xie in Beijing.
But it was a necessary conversation for a country still figuring out how to provide for its people. The government set a goal of creating nine million new jobs this year, down from 11 million last year. That will not be enough for this year’s 8.7 million college graduates plus the many workers and professionals who lost jobs in the sharp economic downturn.
It also raises the question of whether China will forget again the hundreds of millions of low-wage workers who are still trying to scrape by despite their country’s wealth.
“When they need you, you’re an entrepreneur,” goes a widely circulated social media quip on the uncertainty of being a stall operator. “When they don’t need you, you will be an eyesore to the city’s appearance.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/business/china-street-vendors-stall-economy.html
