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Rural Migrants in the Informal Economy of Urbanising China: Violence and Whitewashed Government Legitimacy

Liang Chen
p. 77-86

Abstract

This article situates the informal economic sector in a wider context of post-socialist urban transformation where predatory behaviour toward migrant petty entrepreneurs has been rife. In the limited urban market spaces that are made available to petty migrant vendors, political exclusion and scant state supervision is the norm. Thuggish local residents have stepped in to shake down and expropriate part of the incomes of the migrants. These non-state actors largely fall into the categories of “Black and Evil” listed in Xi Jinping’s campaign to crack down on crime and bolster state legitimacy. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from long-term onsite fieldwork at an outdoor urban marketplace occupied by the stalls of petty vendors, this article shows that such legitimation can only be paper-thin.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 30 May 2025. Accepted on 25 October 2025.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on March 2027.

Outline

Weakened civilisation and the hidden informal marketplace
Characteristics of the market stall vendors
Peri-urban “ghosts” and the diffusion of violence
Ambiguous morality and apologist legitimation
Conclusion

First lines

Concerned about the sluggish economy in post-Covid China, the late Prime Minister Li Keqiang eagerly supported the “stall economy” (ditan jingji 地攤經濟) in Chinese cities. During a visit to street booths in Yantai, Shandong Province in 2020, Li praised people who put up stands and tuck shops for “solving the problem of unemployment” and “bringing back hustle and bustle.” Prior to his speech, a policy to deregulate control over street stalls in Chengdu City had already created approximately 100,000 jobs in two months, and a Central Party School economist predicted that 50 million jobs would be created nationwide this way. The rolling out of policies favouring the informal stall economy in many other cities, however, met with backlash from the political centre. On 6 June 2020, Beijing Daily slammed street booths as “unhygienic and uncivilised” and “tarnishing the image of the capital city and the nation,” followed by a commentary the same day in People’s Daily, the Party’s mouthpiece, t...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Liang Chen, Rural Migrants in the Informal Economy of Urbanising China: Violence and Whitewashed Government LegitimacyChina Perspectives, 144 | 2026, 77-86.

Electronic reference

Liang Chen, Rural Migrants in the Informal Economy of Urbanising China: Violence and Whitewashed Government LegitimacyChina Perspectives [Online], 144 | 2026, Online since 01 March 2027, connection on 16 May 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/20492; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15zun

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About the author

Liang Chen

Liang Chen is a Research Officer at the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (liang.chen@anu.edu.au).

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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