Where Are We Headed To: Analyzing Street Vending Culture in China

“A good hermit hides in the mountain, while a great hermit lives among the noisiest vendors.”

While focusing on the inner peace training of the hermits, this traditional Chinese quote implies the pivotal status of the street vending culture in China. In fact, coming from all over the country, the street vendors are extremely diverse and sometimes have rare items at competitive prices. As a kid, I loved to wander from stall to stall to drool for the amazing little gadgets for sale and listen to the bizarre stories people exchange (because this interactive experience is so much better than the dull automatic purchase at the supermarket no matter how clean the supermarket was). Even sitting on my dad’s bicycle and passing through the set of colorful advertising and bargaining, and the delicious sizzling of fried breadstick, bake-rolls, and other cultural foods would make my day.

Not only does the street stall economy provides a convenient and happy shopping experience for the consumers. Offering a low entry point to entrepreneurship and quite literally livelihood for some low-income families, the street stall economy helped some of the most prominent figures in the economy get through tough times. Jack Ma, the owner of Alibaba, famously started his career selling handicrafts on the streets.

However, the unique culture of street vending drifted away with the start of China’s campaign to create a National Sanitary City (NSC) and National Civilized City (NCC). Due to the informal and mobile nature, street stalls are difficult to regulate and often portrayed as low-end compared to the supermarkets. The down-to-earth appeal of street vendors suddenly became a “sign of dirt, disorder, and backwardness, contradicting the images of both NSCs and NCCs” (Xue and Huang 160). This pursuit of sanitation and cleanliness is amplified during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and Asian Games in 2010 and created a serious backlash among vendors, many of whom doesn’t have an alternative job. The brutality the urban law enforcement utilizes to drive the vendors out fueled the public outcry, even more, inspiring the national debate for the case of the street stall economy.

Although some argue the informal nature of the street stalls leads to their ultimate downfall, I argue that the government’s inconsistency of policies caused the awkward situation of the vendors because it is driven by the economy rather than considering the people element.

Right from the start, vending entered the gray area of law as the entrepreneurship it represents stands in opposition with communism. Carrying foreign goods, many vendors were “considered to be spies, landlords, ruffians, and smugglers who might jeopardize the new regime” (Xue and Huang 159). Due to the explicit ban and fear for their life, not many people opted to choose the job.

However, as China opened up in 1978, the political atmosphere grew much more tolerant toward entrepreneurship. Despite the resurgence of street-vending as part of self-employed economies, the street vending activity is not legalized, instead, it now requires a special license that requires the “possession of a fixed place for business operations” (Xue and Huang 160). No one can meet the requirement due to the mobile nature of vending and the high property price. The business seriously grew in the late 80s, coinciding with the most liberal periods of modern China. The registered unemployed population in Guangzhou “increased from 114,924 to 154,869, with a drastic increase in the unemployment rate from 1.9% to 2.8%” (Guangzhou Statistics Bureau, 2000). This directly caused the government to push for radical changes. The government was willing to tolerate street vending by recognizing street vending as “a way of employment and as an effective supplement to the existing state-owned network of retailing services” (Xue and Huang 160). Nonetheless, it is important to point out that the activity of street vending was never protected by law. Instead, the government simply decided to turn away due to the convenience of solving social issues. The tacit deregulation means extravagant economic opportunities for the vendors. Therefore, more and more people, the majority of the migrants from a rural agricultural economy, joined the street vending population in pursuit of their Chinese Dream. Unfortunately, the gap quickly closed as China established economic growth as the overriding goal and became “highly reliant on foreign investment and trade” (Wu 1095). It is in this context that China started to push for the National Sanitary City and National Civilized City campaigns. Naturally, the honest and convenient but ungainly street stands stood in the way of portraying a good image of the city for the investors. Thus, the migrant workers, who were once the bloodlines of the city, were again illegalized for “[occupying] public space and [affecting] city landscapes and sanitation” (Xue and Huang 161).

This is the final push for marginalizing the floating population. With an agricultural hukou, or documentation that they are not born in the city, the migrant vendors are already “portrayed negatively by indigenous urban residents and maltreated at work” (Roberts 18). Backed by institutionalized discrimination shown through the exclusion of street vendors, the government pushes the divide between migrant workers and local citizens to no return. To make matters even worse, there was “no alternative means of livelihood in this period provided for the street vendors who are considered to obstruct urban development” (Xue and Huang 161). The fact that the government shut all doors on migrant workers would explain so many violent encounters between the street vendors and the chengguan, a type of urban police in China. It is because they are not just fighting for their confiscated goods, they are also fighting for their livelihood and the discrimination they face daily.

This horrendous condition persists until post covid when the government took a U-turn and advocated more street hawkers as they are a key source of employment. Famously, Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, recognized the street hawkers as the “Lifeblood” of the country (Kuo 2020). Although this sounds like good news for many, it, unfortunately, doesn’t have any laws to back it up. As the case of the flourishing street vending activities in the early 80s showed, the seeming success of the activities is only due to the dire economic needs and will collapse once the government changes direction again, leaving the vendors vulnerable. As Xu Jianhua, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Macau said, “the overarching idea about what is modern, what is a good city, …has [not] changed. Modern means clean, orderly skyscrapers by big companies, and smarter cities” (Kuo 2020). Without the change in the government’s fundamental urban planning direction, the advocation of the street hawkers is temporary and not self-sufficient.

Looking across the globe, China is not alone in tackling the difficult problems of the informal economy. In fact, according to the International Labor Organization, people who work informally represent 61.2 percent of global employment, or more than two billion, with the developing economies consisting of a much higher ratio of informal employment in their countries (ILO, 13).

Colombia, another developing country, had a comparable winding history for street vending laws. Similarly, the local government reinforced policies that allow heavy police presents which would remove the street vendors from public space. However, in 2003 after lawsuits filed by the street vendors claiming, “excessive use of force and violation of rights, the Constitutional Court revised and mandated new actions toward street vendors” (Martínez and Short 638). Although this legal framework gives some unethical vendors a loophole to not abide by any laws, it attempted to minimize the power difference between the police and the people, protecting the vulnerable majority of the street vendors from being deprived of their livelihood easily. As a result, local government has to “negotiate relocation plans with street vendors before removing them from public space and as the relocation process is costly and difficult to implement, government intervention is limited” (Martínez 40). Of course, I don’t mean Colombia has achieved perfection with this method as evidence had shown that the implementation of the relocation is not ideal. But this equality between the people and the government shown by the word “negotiation” again implies the Colombia model leans toward the side of vulnerable vendors to ensure the government does not simply override them, which I believe is a valuable lesson for China. As a political scientist J.C. Scott points out, the “possibility for the state to reconstruct social practice in ways that benefit its goals comes from the combination of the unrestrained use of the power derived from authoritarianism and a weakened civil society that lacks the capacity to resist” (qtd. in Xue and Huang 157). In other words, unlike the Colombian government, which is balanced by the constitution, the Chinese government has less restraint, therefore, is more likely to prioritize its own political goal rather than caring for the interest of the vulnerable vendors.

Colombia’s approach toward equity also reveals the street stall economy’s capability once they are on the right tracks. Martinez’s study shows the street vendors “are neither marginal to the formal economy nor unconnected to civil society,” in fact, he urges the city planning to recognize “street vending as an activity that generates incomes and jobs that brings goods and services to consumers” (Martínez 41). This result shows the government should not worry about the unpaid taxes evaded by the street vendors. As a matter of fact, the intertwined economy ensures a boost of the national economy as the informal economy flourishes. The government only needs to keep assisting the informal economies, provide ample supplies, and simply enjoy the economic turnouts.

Although it seems natural to think China should adopt Colombia’s legal framework for street vending, it is crucial to keep in mind the political system operates differently among the two countries. As Cross identifies, in Latin America the vending policies “are often contested, negotiated and fragmented due to the competition among different parties to which street vendors are affiliated” whereas China lacks such organizational power for vendors to push back against adverse policies imposed on them (qtd. in Xue and Huang 157). However, the momentum informal economy provides toward the country’s economic behaviors still applies, which should incentivize China to emphasize the street stall economy along with the convenience and cultural value it provides to both the vendors and the consumers.

At the end of their essay, Xue and Huang conclude China should opt for the ambivalence rather than an absolute negation of a fully inclusionary approach toward street vending because that would allow the city to “attain the dominant goal of protecting the city’s image while alleviating social contradictions” (164). While I agree with the moderate approach, the most important aspect Colombia’s case study reveals is the effect of a clear constitutional law on the protection of the most vulnerable citizens. Once implemented this law, we can take small steps to work through a perfect harmony between the street vendors and the government.

Work Cited

Xue, Desheng, and Gengzhi Huang. “Informality and the State’s Ambivalence in the Regulation of Street Vending in Transforming Guangzhou, China.” Geoforum, vol. 62, Elsevier Ltd, 2015, pp. 156–65, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.04.012.

Guangzhou Statistics Bureau, 2000. Guangzhou Fifty Years. Accessed 08.05.14.

Wu, Fulong. “China’s Great Transformation: Neoliberalization as Establishing a Market Society.” Geoforum, vol. 39, no. 3, May 2008, pp. 1093–1096, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718508000079, 10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.01.007. Accessed 5 Dec. 2021.

‌ Roberts, Kenneth D. “The Determinants of Job Choice by Rural Labor Migrants in Shanghai.” China Economic Review, vol. 12, no. 1, Mar. 2001, pp. 15–39, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X01000414, 10.1016/s1043–951x(01)00041–4. Accessed 5 Dec. 2021.

‌Bonnet, F.; Leung, V.; Chacaltana, J.; et al. 2018. Women and Men in the informal economy: a statistical picture. . Available at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf [Accessed: 4 December 2021].

Martínez, Lina, and Short, John Rennie. “The Informal Economy of Cities in the South: The Case of Cali, Colombia.” International Journal of Sustainable Development