In China, when you look into the society column of a newspaper, you are not surprised to check out another piece of news on a Chengguan and an unlicensed street vendor fighting with each other. When most of us regard Chenguan as monsters, the other day we will find a vendor biting a Chengguan staff and finally we start to ask: what makes city management into a battle?

1. City Management is waiting for a balanced and civilized improvement
Main Author: Rachel Ng
Second Author: Jimbo Lee
In China, when you look into the society column of a newspaper, you are not surprised to check
out another piece of news on a Chengguan and an unlicensed street vendor fighting with each
other. When most of us regard Chenguan as monsters, the other day we will find a vendor biting a
Chengguan staff and finally we start to ask: what makes city management into a battle?
Some people would think it’s government’s fault while others suggest it’s only a Chinese
characteristic. But when it comes to the most critical and root cause of this situation, it should be
the conflicts between the powerful and the disadvantaged.
Chenguan abuse their power on city management. As we know, Chengguan are entitled to keep
the city harmonized and organized on behalf of the police. On this point of view, it’s good for our
whole society. However, many Chengguan misunderstand their own responsibilities and abuse the
granted privileges. Instead of manage, they punish the street vendors who do not follow their
guides. Sometimes these violent actions will lead to bloody incidents and highly infringe the
common rights of the vendor citizens.
Unlicensed street vendors haven’t realized the aim of city management. For most of street
vendors, they are poor and from the bottom of the society, which we call it disadvantaged. They
can’t pay the high rent of a shop so have to earn every penny from haunting stalls . All they care is
how to feed themselves plus the family and pay no attention to how their business would affect the
environment of the city. As a result when Chengguan come to execute rules, they think Chengguan
are the enemies to simply cut their way of earnings so just react to fight blindly and rudely.
To solve this problem, or at least ease the tension, it’s important to get each side educated. These
incidents keep happening is not because government wants to suppress the disadvantaged nor the
vendors are “cave men”. It’s actually caused by the little understanding of city management.
Chengguan should be educated how to manage street vendors. What educated here means two
aspects: firstly, Chengguan staff needs to be well-educated. The government should raise the
requirements for a Chengguan staff. On hiring a Chengguan staff, the government need consider
his overall quality such as education, personal characteristics and problem-tackling skills.
Secondly, Chengguan staff needs to know how to execute city management. The officials should
give more training on responsibilities/ purpose and teach the staffs how to deal with vendors in a
more reasonable manner.
Street vendors should be educated to care more about our city. Each citizen needs to know we are
part of the society and bare the responsibility to make it better, so does each vendor. No matter the
media or normal citizens are demanded to improve the knowledge of our society duties and help to
spread them around. When we see, for example, there are also street vendors in Hong Kong but
much less conflicts, it’s easy to find those vendors are very self-disciplined who will not violate

2. the rights of other citizens.
Certainly, we have many other side alternatives on tacking the tensions and there is still a long
way to go. But when the citizens of the whole society enhance theirs quality and get to know more
about their own duties and rights, we will surely see a different story on our newspaper.
Update:李竞博 Date:2013-12-21