Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-d8cs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T13:09:41.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Street Politics: Street Vendors and Urban Governance in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

Amy Hanser
Amy Hanser*
Affiliation:
Department of sociology, University of British Columbia. Email: hanser@mail.ubc.ca.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Conflicts between urban street vendors and city regulators have become a common urban sight in Chinese cities today. This paper considers how visions of modern urban streets and sidewalks have helped to generate increasingly restrictive policies on street vending and spurred new forms of urban regulation and policing. While mostly an everyday routine of Chinese city life, the resulting vendor–chengguan conflicts dramatize state power in public and carry the latent danger of crowd violence in response. In particular, aggressive policing of highly visible city streets can at times produce a volatile “politics of the street” involving episodes of vendor resistance and even dramatic expressions of bystander solidarity which challenge these street-level expressions of state power.

摘要

在中国, 街头摊贩与城管之间的冲突已经司空见惯。本文探讨: 打造现代城市道路形象, 如何导致更加严格的摊贩管制政策, 促成新形式的城市规划和管理。虽然摊贩与城管冲突在中国城市生活中已经屡见不鲜, 但是这种冲突加剧了政府的公共权力, 带来了群众暴力反抗的潜在危险。特别是对那些最醒目的城市街道的强力管制有时候可能会引起动荡性的“街头政治”, 包括摆摊商贩抵触反抗, 甚至是夸张的旁观者团结, 挑战街道级别的行政权力。

Keywords

Chinastreet regulationstreet vendorschengguanurban governanceurban conflict中国道路管制街头摊贩城管城市管理城市冲突
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 226 , June 2016 , pp. 363 - 382
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anagnost, Ann. 1997. National Past-times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bakken, Børge. 1999. The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bayat, Asef. 1997. “Un-civil society: the politics of the informal people.” Third World Quarterly 18(1), 53–72.Google Scholar
Bayat, Asef. 2000. “From ‘dangerous classes’ to ‘quiet rebels’: politics of the urban subaltern in the global south.” International Sociology 15(3), 533–557.Google Scholar
Beijing chengshi guanli zonghe xingzheng zhifa ju. 2014. “Chengguan zhize” (Chengguan professional duties/functions), http://www.bjcg.gov.cn/cgzz12/. Accessed 13 June 2014.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas. 2011. Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas. 2012. “Colored rabbits, dangerous trees, and public sitting: sidewalks, police, and the city.” Urban Geography 33(7), 917–935.Google Scholar
Bluestone, Daniel. 1991. “The pushcart evil: peddlers, merchants, and New York city's streets, 1880–1940.” Journal of Urban History 18(1), 68–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, M. Christine. 1983. Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bruun, Ole. 1993. Business and Bureaucracy in a Chinese City: An Ethnography of Private Business Households in Contemporary China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Institute of East Asian Studies China Research Monograph.Google Scholar
Cao, Haiying, and Qiu, Leng. 2006. “Chengguan yu xiaofan – shuei dong le shuei de ‘fanwan’?” (Chengguan and small vendors – who is threatening whose “rice bowl”?). Gonghui bolan 20, 4–5.Google Scholar
Caron, Emmanuel. 2013. “Interactions between chengguan and street vendors in Beijing.” China Perspectives 1, 17–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartier, Carolyn, and Tomba, Luigi. 2013. “Symbolic cities and the ‘cake debate’.” In Barmé, Geremie (ed.), China Story Yearbook 2012: Red Rising, Red Eclipse. Canberra: Australian Centre on China in the World, 31–55.Google Scholar
Ceng, Jimao. 2006. “Shehui jingji fazhanlü yu gonggong zhengce Shanghai luntan: Shanghaishi chengshi zhili yu xiaotanfan guanli” (A discussion of strategies for developing the social economy and Shanghai public policy: Shanghai urban governance and the management of street vendors). Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Ceng, Jimao. No date. “Wujiaochang gaoxiao zhoubian tanfan zhuangkuang diaocha” (Survey of the vendor situation surrounding the Wujiaochang gaoxiao area). Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Chen, Jieren. 2007. “Gei xiaotanfan shenglu shi chengguan de lixing zhuanshen” (Allowing vendors their livelihood is a rational turn in city administration). Zhongguo baodao 4, 126.Google Scholar
Cross, John C. 1998. Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Crossa, Veronica. 2009 “Resisting the entrepreneurial city: street vendors’ struggle in Mexico City's historic center.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33(1), 43–63.Google Scholar
Devlin, Ryan. 2011. “‘An area that governs itself’: informality, uncertainty and the management of street vending in New York City.” Planning Theory 10(1), 53–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.Google Scholar
Dutton, Michael. 1998. Streetlife China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ferchen, Matthew. 2008. “Regulating Market Order in China: Economic Ideas, Marginal Markets and the State.” PhD diss., Cornell University.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2009. Security, Territory, Population: Lecture at the College de France 1977–1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hao, Fu. 2007. “Xiao shangfan: chengshi zhi ye” (Street vendors: the “old gentlemen” of the city). Huaren shikan 2, 13–18.Google Scholar
Harms, Erik. 2009. “Vietnam's civilizing process and the retreat from the street.” City & Society 21(2), 182–206.Google Scholar
He, Chenyang, and Wensheng, Zhou. 2009. “Xin jiejin wenjian zaoyu yuanshe jinfa zhi gan” (New lifting of ban clashes with intent of original law), Fazhi ribao, 4 June, 7.Google Scholar
Hu, Junxiu, and Meijia, Li. 2011. “Jindai Zhongguo chengshi de diceng minsheng yu shizheng chongtu: 1908 nian Hankou tanfan fengchao tanxi” (The livelihood of society's bottom layer and regulatory conflict in modern Chinese cities: the 1908 street vending wave in Hankou). Hubei shehuikexue 1, 120–123.Google Scholar
Huang, Gengzhi, and Desheng, Xue. 2011. “1990 nian yilai Guangzhoushi tanfan kongjian zhengzhi de guixun jizhi” (Discipline and anti-discipline: spatial politics of urban street vending in Guangzhou since the 1990s). Acta Geographica Sinica 66(8), 1064–75.Google Scholar
Huang, Gengzhi, Desheng, Xue and Tianjiao, Li. 2012. “Baorong haishi xin de paichi?” (Inclusiveness or exclusiveness? Vendor space effects and planning). Guihuashi 28(8), 78–83.Google Scholar
Huang, Gengzhi, Desheng, Xue and Zhigang, Li. 2014. “From revanchism to ambivalence: the changing politics of street vending in Guangzhou.” Antipode 46(1), 170–189.Google Scholar
Huang, Wenfang. 2009. “Shanghai chengshi gonggong quyu shetan guanli yanjiu” (Research into the management of vending in the public spaces of Shanghai) . Shanghai: Fudan University Urban Environment Management Research Centre.Google Scholar
Watch, Human Rights. 2012. “‘Beat him, take everything away’: abuses by China's chengguan para-police,” https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/china0512ForUpload_1.pdf. Accessed 11 February 2016.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan. 2006. “Police and the regulation of traffic: policing as civilizing process?” In Dubber, M. and Valverde, M. (eds.), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 168–184.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Andrew. 2013. “Death of watermelon vendor sets off outcry in China,” The New York Times, 20 July, A4.Google Scholar
Jiang, Zhen. 2007. “Jietou tanfan zhandao jingying zhili de wenti fenxi he duice yanjiu” (An analysis of problems and countermeasures for the administration of street peddlery). MA thesis, Shandong University.Google Scholar
Klein, Jakob A. 2013. “Everyday approaches to food safety in Kunming.” The China Quarterly 214, 376–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kudva, Neema. 2009. “The everyday and the episodic: the spatial and political impacts of urban informality.” Environment and Planning A 41, 1614–28.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Donald Nicholson-Smith (trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Li, Jason. 2008. “City's men (城管) egao-ed on Baidu Baike,” Virtual China, http://www.virtual-china.org/. Accessed 26 June 2013.Google Scholar
Li, Jialin. 2011. “Chengshi zong de tanfan: guihua wai cunzai de rouxing kangzheng” (Street vendors in the city: flexible resistance outside the plan). In Yingfang, Cheng (ed.), Zhimian dangdai chengshi: wenti ji fangfa (A Straightforward Look at Contemporary Cities: Problems and Methods) . Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Press, 110–141.Google Scholar
Li, Jie. 2006. “Tianjin chengguan zai jing chuan zhifu xiaofan jingxia taopao zhuangshang ren” (Tianjin chengguan officer wears uniform in Beijing, frightened vendor flees, crashing into and injuring another person). Reprinted in Sichuan xinwenwang, 24 September 2006.Google Scholar
Li, Mo. 2007. “Jiejin malu tandian: minsheng da yu ‘mianzi’” (Lifting the ban on street stalls: the people's livelihood is greater than “face”). Xiaokang 4, 56–58.Google Scholar
Liang, Dongping. 2007. “Jiafeng zhong de yeshi: dui Nanning shi Zhongshan lu de yanjiu” (Night market in a crevice: research on Nanning city's Zhongshan Road). MA thesis, Guangxi University for Nationalities.Google Scholar
Lipkin, Zwia. 2006. Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia, and Ehrenfeucht, Renia. 2009. Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ma, Licheng. 2007. “Guanli xiaofan hen fuza ma?” (Is it really so complicated to manage vendors?). Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan 6(11), 84.Google Scholar
McCann, Eugene J. 1999. “Race, protest, and public space: contextualizing Lefebvre in the US city.” Antipode 31(2), 163–184.Google Scholar
Pomfret, James. 2011. “Police use tear gas to quell riot in southern China,” Reuters, 13 June, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-china-labour-unrest-idUSTRE75C0KM20110613. Accessed 16 June 2014.Google Scholar
Qian, Junxi. 2014. “No right to the street: motorcycle taxis, discourse production and the regulation of unruly mobility,” Urban Studies, 23 June, http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/07/04/0042098014539402.full.Google Scholar
Sha, Sha. 2006. “Rang wuzheng xiaofanmen nenggou kao laodong shenghuo” (Let unlicensed vendors rely on their labour to make a living). Jiancha fenyun 22, 75.Google Scholar
Shequ . 2007. “Yi shequ zizhi pojie chengshi tanfan nanti” (Relying on community autonomy to solve the city street vendor problem). Shequ 4, 21.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1984. Chinese Business under Socialism: The Politics of Domestic Commerce in Contemporary China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1993. China's Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980–1990. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 2013. “Streets as suspect.” Critical Asian Studies 45(1), 3–26.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J., and Hu, Yiyang. 2012. “Welfare, wealth and poverty in urban China: the dibao and its differential disbursement.” The China Quarterly 211, 741–764.Google Scholar
Stanek, Lukasz. 2011. Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strand, David. 1989. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Di. 2003. Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870–1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Gang, Ye, Yuan and Wei, Liu. 2006. “Chengshi guanli zhe yu tanfan de ‘zhanzheng’” (The “war” between city managers and vendors), Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan, 4 September, 26–28.Google Scholar
Wang, Luozhong, Jinfa, Liu and Tao, Zong. 2006. “Chengshi jietou tanfan: feizheshi jiuye yu gonggong zhengce huiying” (Urban street vendors: informal employment and the response of public policy). Xin shiye 2, 66–68.Google Scholar
Wang, Yijun. 2007. “96.5% de ren qinyan jianguo chengguan chachao xiaotan xiaofan” (96.5% of people have personally witnessed chengguan confiscating vendors goods), Xinhuanet, 5 March, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-03/05/content_5799889.htm. Accessed 11 February 2016.Google Scholar
Wu, Fulong, Xu, Juang and Yeh, Anthony Gar-On. 2007. Urban Development in Post-reform China: State, Market and Space. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wu, Yan. 2007. “Youxian de fang kexue de guan Shanghai jiejin xiaotanfan yu xin nanti” (Limited application of scientific management, Shanghai lifts the ban on vendors and encounters new difficulties), Renmin ribao, 20 April, http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2007-04/30/content_6046769.htm. Accessed 25 July 2008.Google Scholar
Yang, Changchun. 2008. “Chengguan de ‘22 tiao jungui’” (The 22 regulations of the chengguan), Nanfang zhoumo, 3 January.Google Scholar
Yang, Honglie. 2002. “Pochu ‘malu jingji’ zhuzhong shangyejie jianshe” (Eliminating the street economy, emphasizing the development of commercial streets). Chengshi guihua 26(7), 71–73.Google Scholar
Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Li. 2006. “Contesting spatial modernity in late-socialist China.” Current Anthropology 47(3), 461–484.Google Scholar
Zhang, Shudan. 2011. “Chengdu meinü weiwu weidu daren chengguan” (Formidable Chengdu beauties surround chengguan who beat a man), Nanfang dushi bao, 14 May, http://news.shangdu.com/201/20110516/11_307839.shtml. Accessed 16 June 2014.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yanling. 2011. “Death of disabled vendor sparks riot in Guizhou,” Caixin Online, 27 July, http://english.caixin.com/2011-07-27/100284567.html. Accessed June 16, 2014.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yongmei, and Li, Bingqin. 2011. “Motivating service improvement with awards and competitions: hygienic city campaigns in China.” Environment and Urbanization 23(1), 41–56.Google Scholar
Zhao, Jie. 2008. “Zhandao moshi: qinzhan gonggong liyi de yuanyin fenxi” (Street-occupation model: an analysis of the reasons that public interest is infringed upon). Qilu xuekan 203(2), 104–07.Google Scholar
Zhong, Xiaomin. 2007. “Hen du! Chengguan tide liuxun laotai xiashen liuxue” (Vicious! Chengguan kick a 60-year-old woman, cause her to bleed). Xiandai kuaibao, reprinted in Sichuan xinwenwang, 23 May.Google Scholar
Zhu, Xiaoping. 2011. “Shanghai Huadong shifan daxue zhoubian de ditan juji xianxiang yanjiu” (A study of the concentration of street vendors around Shanghai East China Normal University). MA thesis, East China Normal University.Google Scholar