"Does this mean I won't have to hide from Chengguan in the future?" said Wang Lianfen, a street peddler in the Changchun Street in downtown Beijing in response to the Chinese government's move to legalize street vendors,
The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, is soliciting public advice before August 28 on a regulation of self-employed businessmen.
According to the draft regulation, self-employment businessmen can register a business license with their home address instead of a business address.
This means street venders, who have no fixed business locations, would be registered and become a part of urban business community, analysts said.
The "Chengguan" Wang mentioned refers to China's urban administrative officers. They are responsible for maintaining public facilities, banning spitting and littering in public and stopping construction sites from making too much noise at night.
But a major part of Chengguan's jobs is to deal with unlicensed street peddlers like Wang, who occasionally wind up in violent clashes with them. It is common to see peddlers scampering from their chosen spots of business once they detect the Chengguan.
"I have a specially-made bag. It can help me pack my wares and run away as soon as possible once I see Chengguan," said Wang.
Most of the street peddlers, like Wang, are low-income urbanites or migrant workers. The 54-year-old woman, from Yongzhou City of central Hunan Province, came to Beijing to join her daughter six months ago.
To ease her daughter's financial burden, Wang began selling things like socks, slippers and hair ornaments on the sidewalk.
"I can earn about 300 yuan (44 U.S. dollars) a month in good time," she said. By "good time", she means no Chengguan fine her or confiscating her wares.
"If I can do business smoothly under the regulation and don't have to hide from Chengguan, I want to expand my business and earn more money," she said.
The government's move was among its efforts to ease employment pressures and give vendors legal business status so that they could live on their own, said Zhou Qiren, a professor from the China Center for Economic Research at Beijing University.
The global financial crisis started to take its toll on Chinese economy from the second half last year, causing declining economic growth, falling company profits and employment.
The Chinese government set a target at the beginning of the year to create 9 million new jobs for urban residents this year. However, there would be 24 million new job seekers this year, according to the statistics from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS).
Besides the 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package to boost economy, the government has taken measures to stabilize and increase employment, including expanding domestic consumption, reducing enterprises' tax burden, encouraging graduates and migrant workers to be self-employed and setting up vocational training.
"Although the economy is recovering, it is still unable to create enough jobs," Li Xiaochao, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics, said when he gave the semi-annual economic report a week ago.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 7.9 percent year on year in the second quarter, up from 6.1 percent in the first quarter and 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter last year.
"Achieving the 8-percent economic growth target is essential for expanding employment because each percentage point growth in GDP can create 800,000 to 1 million jobs," MOHRSS spokesman Yin Chengji said Friday.
However, "the regulation of self-employment businessmen is not only a makeshift move to enhance employment on the backdrop of global financial crisis, but also a long-term strategy to promote the development of private economy," said Bao Yujun, president of the China Society of Private Economy Research.
The draft regulation also aroused concern that more people would become street peddlers, taking up street sides and causing traffic and hygiene problems.
Zhou Qiren suggested the government should set fixed locations and time period for street peddlers to avoid such concerns. Measures must be taken to balance maintaining public orders and people's basic livelihood, he said.
(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2009)
