With unemployment rising amid China’s first economic contraction in four decades, Beijing is turning to sidewalk trade as a way to unleash its animal spirits
China spent much of the past two decades clamping down on street vendors in its biggest cities, part of an effort to clean up the country’s image, improve food safety and hygiene and more tightly regulate commerce.
To that end, Chinese leaders have rolled out（launch） a string of measures to support hiring for fresh graduates, migrant workers, military veterans and millions of other workers who have lost their jobs in the pandemic.
“The country will get better if the market, enterprises and individual business owners survive and develop. We will support you,” he said, while hailing streetside food stalls’ contributions to “human culinary culture.” ~ sb/sth (as) sth 赞扬（或称颂）…为…（尤用于报章等）
Street vending was once a vibrant part of China’s private economy, providing cheap and handy products and services to customers. Without renting a booth or even hiring any staff, a vendor could start a business almost right away, with a tiny investment. These businesses helped absorb the vast population of laborers who were fired as Beijing moved to overhaul大修；改造 its bloated（If you describe an organization as bloated, you mean that it is larger and less efficient than it should be.） and inefficient state-owned companies in the 1990s.
After the Chinese economy took off, officials and some citizens came to see street vendors as chaotic and unruly（disorderly）. Dogged by complaints（(of a problem or bad luck 问题或不幸) to cause you trouble for a long time （长期）困扰，折磨，纠缠） over food-safety violations, counterfeit goods and environmental damage, vendors in some big cities were forced into the suburbs or out of cities completely.
One of Chengdu’s new street vendors, Li Zhenzhen, said business was starting to pick up（to get better, stronger, etc.; to improve eg:Trade usually picks up in the spring.） after she and a friend pooled their resources in mid-May to source jewelry from a wholesale market. At the start they went entire days without selling a pair of earrings, but on Sunday alone they pulled in(pull in an amount of money:earn) sales totaling 1000 yuan, or $140, enough to cover their initial investment.
“I had been sitting idle at home for months without any income,” Ms. Li said. “If the business really goes well, I will consider opening an online store.”
In the past few days, a slew of cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Changsha, Qingdao and Foshan have introduced similar measures loosening regulations for street vendors.
China’s biggest retail giants, including Suning.com Co., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. are jumping in too, with cheap loans, logistics help and online promotions for owners of small stalls. Meanwhile, Chinese investors are snapping up(snap sth↔up抢购；抢先弄到手All the best bargains were snapped up within hours.) shares of beer brewers, some food producers and a motor vehicle company that makes cargo vans which can be converted into mobile stores.
Economists say there is some logic to the government’s push. Lower-income people and small businesses have been hit the hardest by the pandemic-induced downturn. By targeting economic activity with few barriers to entry, the hope is to quickly help lower-income earners find a stable footing.
But many also wonder whether the hype促销广告 around street stalls has much grounding in reality.
“It definitely helps with employment but the extent of boosting overall economic growth may still be very limited,” says Fan Lei, a Shanghai-based economist at Sealand Securities. “They don’t really have other good options in the short term.”
In practice, it is unclear whether these vendors—though technically employed—will be any better off economically. The street-food business was never easy to begin with, and the sudden burst of enthusiasm could end in tears for many new market entrants.
In the longer run, the reappearance of street stalls is likely to reintroduce the same problems with food quality and counterfeiting that led the government to crack down in the first place, Mr. Fan said.
Indeed, a commentary in the Communist Party-run Beijing Daily newspaper insisted over the weekend that the capital city wasn’t a suitable place for street vendors, underscoring(= underline) the lingering uncertainties around the new policy.
But Ms. Wang remains wary(cautious). She recalls working from dawn to dusk in Beijing, constantly on the lookout for the dreaded chengguan, or urban management enforcers. The chengguan were known for zealous, sometimes violent, crackdowns on businesses such as Ms. Wang’s, which was technically illegal under city management rules.
June 10, 2020• 1531 words
