Campaign to clear illegal stores extends nationwide amid resentment from locals

The controversial campaign to demolish “illegal” stores has swept all over China, amid wide opposition from local residents.

At the start of this year, the Beijing municipal government launched a campaign to remove street- level stores using windows and doors of apartments on the first floor. Apart from Beijing, cities including Shanghai, Wuhan in Central China’s Hubei Province, Guangzhou in South China’s Guangdong Province, and Jinan in East China’s Shandong Province have also conducted similar campaigns to “make the city cleaner.”

“The government demolished the outdoor barbecue booth, and now we cannot carry our summer tradition of enjoying barbecue outside in evenings,” a local resident in Jinan surnamed Shan told the Global Times.

Apart from food, many residents in these cities have complained that the campaign has taken away their “precious memory.”

“I’ve been strolling and enjoying these little restaurants and café shops in the small alleys, hutong for many years, but the hutong is now destroyed and along with it my beautiful memories,” said a Beijing resident surnamed Zheng.

But the campaign is hailed by others.

A fruit shop in Jintailu street in Beijing has witnessed more customers after it was refurbished into a cleaner place during this campaign.

“Those small businesses, called ‘ low- end industries’ were widely constructed in Beijing and some other cities since China’s reform and opening- up started in 1979. It was always illegal but the government turned a blind eye,” said Niu Fengrui, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Niu added that these small businesses offered lots of job opportunities for newcomers to the big cities.

Beijing has benefited from the clustering of resources in the city as a consequence of the market economy and administrative measures, but it has also suffered from “urban diseases” including overcrowding and congestion, said Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute of China Reform Foundation.