EditorialReturn of street stalls with Beijing’s blessing can lift China jobs gloom
- Premier Li Keqiang has praised the comeback of vendors amid the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, and although they may be shunned by people living in larger cities those elsewhere will welcome the chance to make a decent living
The saying that necessity is the mother of invention, meaning that new ways can be found to meet a need, can on occasion be applied just as aptly to reinvention. Take China’s resort to a “street vendor economy” – encouraging people to set up open-air stalls as full or part-time jobs – amid tens of millions of job losses in the economic fallout from the new coronavirus outbreak.
It marks a U-turn from the Communist Party’s previous effort to clamp down on street vendors in an attempt to tighten control of urban life and enhance the appearance of mainland China’s cities.
The negative attitude towards street vendors began to change as jobs, not growth, became the new economic priority. Premier Li Keqiang put this into perspective recently when he said 600 million Chinese still subsist on 1,000 yuan (US$142) a month.
He praised the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province for “creating 100,000 jobs by allowing 36,000 street stalls” and said street stalls and small shops “are important sources of jobs” and an integral part of people’s lives.
Unlike higher earning residents of first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, people on 1,000 yuan a month in smaller centres do not patronise big shopping malls for basic necessities, particularly when economic growth has slowed.