The contradiction between vendors and chengguans was “heated” in Chinses social media, when I was in middle school. At that time, social medias were highly developed in China, especially QQ of Tencent, and Weibo of Sina. And the time is also when Chinese cities were quickly developing and expanding, many cities in China were on the way of modernity. Vendors, which were viewed as representation of informal economics, were standing on the opposite side of the city development, which requires organized regulation and efficiency.
Chengguan, which means city guardians in English, then were the employees of the government to help regulate the city. In such conditions, it was easy for me, at that time, to see many reporting of the contrast between chengguan and vendors, and it would always create huge responses in social media.
Below are the links about the events of chengguan.
https://baike.baidu.com/item/5%C2%B731%E5%BB%B6%E5%AE%89%E5%9F%8E%E7%AE%A1%E8%B8%A9%E4%BA%BA%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6/5647203?fr=aladdin
https://baike.baidu.com/item/1%C2%B79%E5%B9%BF%E5%B7%9E%E5%9F%8E%E7%AE%A1%E6%89%93%E4%BA%BA%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6/9895451?fr=aladdin
The information spreading in social media was characterized for its segmentation, which means that, the information of the event, in most condition, could not reveal the whole picture of the event. However, it was because of such characteristics, the information was easterly accessed by people and it could resonate with people easily too. Another element that contributed to such huge spreading and influence in social media was that, chengguan represents the power of the government, and vendors represents the migrant workers, who, in most condition, did not have chances to receive good education, and did not have certain skills to enable them to find a decent jobs, so they were usually were viewed as the minority while compared with crhenguan, in this way, the emotion could be easily raised once people saw the reporting, and people would support the vendors in most conditions and condemn the violent actions of chengguan.
In recent years, it became kind of rare to see the reporting of the contradiction between chengguan and vendors. However, it was also difficult to see a vendor on the street. I do not know is whether because of the chengguan, then vendors eventually disappear in the cities, or they just disappeared out of other reasons.
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