Of course everybody needs money but the vendors can sometimes be very detrimental to the people who play by the rules and they don't seem to care. The individual shops around xiao xi men and wen hua xiang that pay exorbitant rent to be where they are can suffer greatly from the vendors that put a table directly in front of their door and sell similar goods for cut-throat rates. Those shops are not monopoly corporations and as legal tenants and taxpayers they deserve to be protected from illegal commerce on their doorsteps that threaten to put them out of business.

For some odd reason there seems to be abundant support for illegal vendors that set up shop wherever they please. Some calling them 'charming' etc. but is it really logical to just let this grow in whatever way it feels like to whatever size with zero regulation and zero consideration for the neighborhoods that they decide to take over? Whoever feels like setting up a little shop wherever they want should be allowed to do whatever they want just because they feel like selling stuff on street? Really?

What happens when they decide to set up shop in front of YOUR house blocking you from getting in and start taking money out of YOUR pockets? What happens when there are more illegal street vendors than legal businesses? (as is the case in wen hua xiang at night)

Regulating the vendors in a way that is less detrimental to the neighborhoods and business areas that they occupy is obviously a good idea. Finding a place for them to exist legally without having such a direct impact on nearby legal businesses (i.e. directly on their doorsteps) is an even better idea.

Is the living they are trying to make as honest as the people who pay rent directly behind them who's business they steal and undercut?

These are illegal vendors who adhere to no rules of commerce, sanitation, traffic, politeness and fairness, they pay no taxes, rent, salary, electricity or any of the other fees that infrastructure require therefore they are only helping themselves and do not do any good to the community in fact quite the opposite they leech off of the hard work of others who came before them and make their living harder by selling similar products for cheaper directly in front of them in many cases. They are completely unregulated and can do what ever they want when the chengguan aren't around is that 'honest' or fair to the community?

While all of the legal businesses struggle to pay their ever increasing rent and every other increasingly expensive aspect of running an actual 'honest' business more and more street vendors appear every day and if there isn't some kind of enforcement on their growth I fear this problem will eventually engulf much of the city.

This illegal activity cannot go unchecked forever right? Otherwise who will work anymore? We can all just sell crap on the street from now on until we are old and call it an honest living right? Who will ever pay rent again if the illegal path is the less regulated and more profitable option? Where does it end? What if they start selling drugs or something? There are vendors that already sell strong lasers and stun guns in wen hua xiang, is that ok? They're already illegal and unregulated right? why not go all the way?

In my opinion the biggest tragedy in this situation is that the vendors who will lose the most from this campaign are probably the poorest. The people who actually are carrying babies and selling things like fruit and shao kao and who probably make much less money from running an illegal blanket shop will probably feel the crackdown the hardest and probably affect the businesses around them the least, they are the easiest to catch. Meanwhile the rich kids with their nice cars in wen hua xiang are still in full effect tonight, these kids actually have quite an adverse effect on many of the businesses that pay premium rent to be in wen hua xiang as well as the hundreds of families that live in wen hua xiang and are the least polite.

But don't mess with them because you might get beat up by them or their mafia-like friends. Guess they have some pretty amazing guanxi.

Thank you hedgepig.

What the hell's a gigawatt?! :)