When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Chinese cities, the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched “a special plan to improve the assistance and management services for vagrants and beggars living without shelter.”Footnote 1 The aim was to remove panhandlers, the homeless and other mobile poor from the streets to curtail the spread of the virus and to ensure that they were isolated if infected or that they left the city. The plan combined various associations deeply ingrained in Chinese culture that are linked to “beggars” and which make their governance so conflicted. Panhandlers are considered to be poor and pitiable and so their treatment is a litmus test of benevolence and state legitimacy.Footnote 2 According to legal experts writing in the Legal Daily (Fazhi ribao 法制日报), “offering help to vulnerable groups such as vagrants and beggars … is also a manifestation of the continuous progress of a country's social civilization.”Footnote 3 In contrast, beggars are also often portrayed as beyond control and dangerous. Officials and scholars alike emphasize that they are harbingers of social instability and generate crime and disease.Footnote 4 Moreover, beggars' visibility in public spaces can be understood as a symbol. Because they trigger negative associations with poverty, transience and informality, these scenes stand for the state's lack of control and appear as a moral and aesthetic nuisance questioning China's modernity. Respective policies therefore not only try to “rescue and assist” (jiuzhu 救助) but also “to maintain social security, clean the social atmosphere and improve the appearance of the city.”Footnote 5
This study aims to take a deeper look into how these discourses intertwine with the state's management of panhandlers on urban streets and to contribute to our understanding of poverty governance in contemporary Chinese cities. Using the southern metropolis of Guangzhou as a case study, I examine how local government actors regulate panhandling in the city and how they engage with beggars in public space. I explore the internal logic of their approach and how it has changed over 40 years of reform and opening. At which junctures do contradictions and conflicts arise? I focus on local state actors such as the bureau of comprehensive city management (known as the chengguan 城管), the police bureau and the bureau of civil affairs along with its centres for “custody and repatriation” (shourong qiansong 收容遣送) (CR hereafter) (until 2003) and its “assistance stations” (jiuzhu zhan 救助站) (after 2003).
There is scant literature on beggars and their governance in the People's Republic of China.Footnote 6 Existing studies cover the early migration movementsFootnote 7 and, lately, focus on beggars’ agency versus the growing state attention.Footnote 8 Chinese works emanate primarily from the fields of urban planning and management, welfare administration and public security.Footnote 9 The more dominant academic discussions about “new urban poverty,”Footnote 10 however, mostly centre on the unemployed with an urban household registration (hukou 户口), the dispossessed and rural migrants.Footnote 11 Beggars – the most vulnerable among rural migrants – are often excluded from these studies, as scholars focus on “migrant workers” (nongmingong 农民工). Social welfare research tends to revolve around the “minimum livelihood guarantee” (zuidi shenghuo baozhang 最低生活保障, dibao hereafter),Footnote 12 leaving open questions on the assistance stations and their emergence out of the CR system – once a most potent tool of migration control. Nevertheless, these and other studies highlight 1) a growing conflict between the state's (communist) provision of social care and the (capitalist) emphasis on individual responsibilityFootnote 13; and 2) a differentiated governance of vulnerable groups. In the name of benevolence, social stability and urban modernity, local state actors shape cities and manage the population through welfare programmes, hukou policies and redevelopment projects.Footnote 14 Panhandlers are embedded in both contexts.
This study uses additional data from primary sources in Guangzhou, as explained below. I concentrate on the CR system during the first two decades of the reform period, explaining its rhetoric and shifting position between welfare and control. This system officially targeted panhandlers in need and increasingly focused on their exclusion from the city. Later, it covered rural migrants in general, supported by the pejorative associations linked to beggars and extended to migrants. In contrast to extant research, the study finds that CR was not abolished after 2003 but transformed. The succeeding system of assistance stations offers welfare to “drifting and begging persons” as a narrowly defined group of deserving poor. However, the assistance stations’ help is short-term, and the main goal is still repatriation – that is, sending them back to their home villages. The article elucidates the local personnel involved and their approaches to managing public space. It embeds newer developments during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 in the overall process. While several layers of state regulations and actors contradict each other and create grey areas of state-induced informality, beggars are continuously criminalized and excluded from public space.
Data and Methods
The paper draws on data gathered during fieldwork in Guangzhou (2011–2014), including non-participant observation of panhandlers and their interactions with state authorities in commercial, touristic and religious public areas.Footnote 15 I define panhandlers as people who ask for money or help as charity while emphasizing their state of misery through their appearance or overall performance. This allows me to differentiate panhandlers from street artists. For interviews, I included people who categorized themselves as “beggars” (qigai 乞丐) or as “begging” (qitao 乞讨). I interviewed 50 people who were either panhandling at the time or had panhandled in the past in Guangzhou, focusing on their motivation, socioeconomic background and experiences of governance and welfare. The state's perspective was additionally analysed through laws and regulations on panhandling from the district to the national level, concentrating on information pertaining particularly to Guangzhou. The study considers Guangzhou's yearbooks and chronicles, examines official announcements and reports, especially those from the Ministry and bureaus of civil affairs in Guangdong, Guangzhou, and the local assistance stations. Chinese academic papers by authors who either cooperate with or work at the assistance stations and/or related social work companies offer a further look into the relevant procedures. The analysis kept in mind the varying political and practical understandings of the Chinese term for “beggar” and the administrative label liulang qitao renyuan 流浪乞讨人员. According to the legal text, the latter phrase refers to “drifting and begging persons” until 2013, and to “vagrants and beggars” in the following years. While translations can affect connotations to some extent, liulang is interpreted as “vagrant” or “drifting” – i.e. from one job or place to another with no purpose.
Governing Visible Poverty Through “Custody and Repatriation”
After 1949, Guangzhou's city leaders accepted Beijing's request to set up “custody centres” (shou-rongsuo 收容所) to deal with refugees, vagrants and the “parasitic population” (jisheng renkou 寄生人口).Footnote 16 The parasitic population referred to panhandlers, prostitutes and pickpockets, etc. Such people were viewed as victims of the “old society” (jiu shehui 旧社会) – that is, of capitalism, militarism and colonialism – but they were also regarded as a source of instability owing to their habits and “illegitimate professions.”Footnote 17 According to local chronicles, Guangzhou's custody centres held about 60,000 people from 1951 to 1957.Footnote 18 The aim was to send them back to their home villages or to “reform” (gaizao 改造) them using practical and ideological education to make them choose a different livelihood.Footnote 19 When, in 1957, China declared that it had officially eradicated panhandling throughout China (together with prostitution and other “vices”), it was an important milestone for the self-understanding of the young socialist republic. The custody centres were reduced in number and size and were redefined as “custody and repatriation” centres – institutions which became a vital cog in the country's hukou system to control the growth of the urban population and rural-to-urban migration.Footnote 20
In 1980, however, the Ministry of Civil Affairs admitted that the “problem of begging is a social problem that has existed for a very long time. In particular in the past decade of chaos [meaning the Cultural Revolution], after the collapse of the national economy and the weakening of custody and repatriation, begging became a serious phenomenon in some cities.”Footnote 21 Two years later, the State Council announced its “Measures of custody and repatriation of urban drifting and begging persons,” followed by the “Execution details” of the Ministries of Civil Affairs and Public Security.Footnote 22 These regulations targeted those who roamed and panhandled in public spaces or who lived on the streets.Footnote 23 Such people had to be admitted, educated and “immediately sent back to their homes.”Footnote 24
According to the legal text, these measures were to be understood as a form of “relief” (jiuji 救济).Footnote 25 However, in everyday enforcement, they barely served as a support system. According to Wen Changluo 温长洛 from Guangzhou's social relief department (shejiu chu 社救处): “Custody and repatriation mean the administrative management of the society where coercion is primary and support only secondary.”Footnote 26 “Administrative management” in this case referred to a penalty system which punished activities that supposedly disturbed a city's social peace (but which were still outside the scope of criminal law). The police enforced these measures with warnings, fees or detention.Footnote 27 In the case of CR, the police made arrests and then sent detainees off to CR centres, which remained under the responsibility of the bureau of civil affairs.Footnote 28 When issuing further local measures in 1983 and 1985, the governments in Guangdong and Guangzhou broadened their definition of “drifting and begging persons” to include those trying to flee to Hong Kong, prostitutes, “suspicious criminals on the run,” those “who disturb public order” and “other aimlessly wandering persons (mangliu renyuan 盲流人员).”Footnote 29 “Mangliu” was (and still is) a pejorative term for all rural migrants and shows the general interpretation of the law. Guangzhou government specifically targeted rural migrants not connected to an urban danwei 单位 (work unit), without family in the city, or without a stable income.Footnote 30 Anticipating national policy, it referred to this population as sanwu renyuan 三无人员 – people without the three [securities]. In 1991, the State Council followed suit and made official what had long been the custom at the local level with the promulgation of its “Comments on the reform of custody and repatriation,” which extended the remit of CR centres. What was initially designed for beggars was extended to include rural migrants without ID, a permanent residence or form of income in the city.Footnote 31 The CR regulations still defined the target group as “drifting and begging persons” but used the term as a pejorative social category to control rural-to-urban migration.
Monetary incentives accompanied a shift in the operation of CR centres. Owing to local budget constraints, the bureau of civil affairs offered minimal financial support, in some cases only paying staff salaries but not running costs. The new policies allowed the centres to issue fees while the overall expenses increased more than sixfold during the 1990s.Footnote 32 Detainees had to pay for their detention, board and lodging, as well as a return ticket to their home villages.Footnote 33 Those unable to pay had to work in CR-controlled institutions. Moreover, there are reports of arbitrary extortion for deposits, fees and bribery.Footnote 34 Poverty-stricken panhandlers, mostly old and disabled, were hardly targeted in this system as their share of those detained in the centres fell from 20.2 per cent in 1991 to 3.8 per cent in 2000.Footnote 35
As Figure 1 shows, the CR system expanded following the “Comments” of 1991. As rural migrants were considered to be a security threat and a symbol of backwardness in public space, the CR system developed in tune with general city-wide events and campaigns. The two peaks of 131,143 and 190,900 internees in 1998 and 2001 corresponded with the launch of an ambitious “civilized city” campaign and the hosting of the Ninth National Games. While pertinent local institutions celebrated these higher numbers as a sign of success, they continued to push the boundaries of the national regulations. Some political scientists argue that a certain degree of deviance from central policies is inherent in the Chinese state, leading to productive flexibility but also a dangerous loss of control.Footnote 36 The CR system became a general tool for controlling any unwanted segments of the population and was eventually applied to all those found without the required papers, including tourists, travellers in transit and those who had just arrived and who had no opportunity – and no obligation – to be already registered at the police.Footnote 37 Guangdong government criticized Guangzhou's approach several times as “normal migrant workers” constituted the majority of internees.Footnote 38
Figure 1: Cases Taken to CR Centres (until 2002) and Offered Assistance by the Assistance Stations in Guangzhou (2003 and later)
Source: Guangzhou Yearbook, various years. Some editions (1985, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 2000, 2002) refer to “persons” (ren 人) but the most commonly used category is “cases” (renci 人次).
Guangzhou's broad interpretation of “drifting and begging persons” as well as the arbitrariness and even brutality of its system can be seen in the case of Sun Zhigang 孙志刚. He was a design graduate from Wuhan University of Technology who had just started a job in the city. Following a random check, he was found to be without ID or residence card and so was taken to the police station and then to a CR centre. His friends and employer brought the missing documents, additional recommendations, fees and bribes to the centre – but to no avail. He died from serious injuries received during his detention.Footnote 39 Although not the first to die under such circumstances, Sun's death received the most attention.Footnote 40 Pressure from (social) media highlighted the case while lawyers petitioned the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for reform – and succeeded. In June 2003, the 1982 Measures, which had been the basis of migration control since the early reforms, were nullified.Footnote 41
System Changes in 2003: From Exclusion to Welfare?
The new “Measures for managing and assisting drifting and begging persons living without means in cities” took effect in August 2003.Footnote 42 Figure 1 illustrates that Guangzhou government only published statistics for the following months. Moreover, the Figure clearly shows a break and change in the scope of the system. “Drifting and begging persons” were now narrowly defined as homeless people who wander around and panhandle for a living, who are unable to work, who lack support from friends and family and who do not qualify for existing welfare programmes.Footnote 43 The Ministry of Civil Affairs highlighted that those “who wander and beg, but do not meet the above requirements, do not belong to the target group of this welfare programme.”Footnote 44 The CR centres were renamed “assistance stations” and continue to remain under the jurisdiction of the local bureau of civil affairs, while the police lost the authority to round up beggars. Officially, the stations are not allowed to take people into custody against their will, and those seeking protection are free to leave the premises anytime. The 2003 “Measures” explicitly prohibit forced labour or the charging of fees.Footnote 45
This policy shift corresponded with the Hu–Wen administration's emphasis on humanization (yi ren wei ben 以人为本) and the introduction of new programmes on poverty reduction and the improved treatment of rural migrants in the cities.Footnote 46 From 2005 onwards, separate protection centres for street children were set up in line with the new system and, in 2006, forcing others to beg, especially children and minors (under 14 years), became a criminal offence.Footnote 47 The assistance stations became part of the expanding social welfare offered to the different poverty groups as defined by the state.Footnote 48 The city of Guangzhou has two main stations, in Tianhe 天河 and Luogang 萝岗 districts, as well as branches in Panyu 番禺, Zengcheng 增城, Huadu 花都 and Conghua 从化 districts.Footnote 49 Regulations of 2014 broadened their scope to include vagrants and beggars, meaning migrants “without means of subsistence” (zishen wuli jiejue shisu 自身无力解决食宿) who are currently or will in the future end up drifting or panhandling in the city.Footnote 50 Comparing the 15 years before and after 2003, the number of people covered by the new classification dropped by more than a half (see Figure 1). For the government and many Chinese researchers, there is a clear shift “from forced CR to loving care.”Footnote 51
The success of the new system as a welfare institution is, however, limited. A person eligible for assistance can receive medical care, accommodation and food for a maximum of ten days, twice a year. The focus is on short-term emergency care and supporting panhandlers to leave the city. Assistance staff can help eligible people to contact home authorities and relatives and can organize and pay for return tickets.Footnote 52 Ignoring the various reasons for panhandling in the first place, reuniting with the family remains the default solution. If a family cannot be located, those in need might be referred to “settlement centres” (anzhi zhongxin 安置中心). But again, settlement in these centres is meant to be temporary and repatriation measures take place at regular intervals according to the motto “low admittance rate, low occupancy rates, high turnover rate” (di zhiliu lü, di anzhi lü, gao zhuanxian lü 低滞留率、低安置率、高周转率).Footnote 53 Thus, the goal of repatriation remains at the core of the assistance stations’ mission.
The offer of assistance from the state is not always wanted by panhandlers. There are reports for Guangzhou and other cities that a significant number refuse even to go to an assistance station.Footnote 54 The interviewees in this study emphasized the importance of self-determination and rejected the patriarchal discipline of the stations. The staff in the stations determine the day's timetable – when to get up, when to go to bed and when to eat. Personal belongings are stored when entering the station and alcohol and cigarettes are forbidden.Footnote 55 Moreover, the experiences of arbitrary detention before and after 2003 were still raw for my interviewees. Flora Sapio highlights that while “mental illness” is unspecified within the regulations, the diagnosis is used to justify coerced detention.Footnote 56 This does not mean that no panhandlers are relying on or even taking advantage of the stations’ services. Some register multiple times to get more food, medical care and transport tickets.Footnote 57
For many people engaging in panhandling, however, returning home is not the solution. They have left because their problems cannot be remedied there. Statistically, poverty in China correlates with rural residency, old age, the absence of children and illness.Footnote 58 These are the characteristics that describe beggars as well. Of the 50 panhandlers involved with this study, most were between 40 and 70 years old, and 27 were physically disabled or were begging for their disabled parent or child. While physical limitations need not necessarily lead to poverty and panhandling, physical strength and health are important assets in the countryside and for a migrant worker in the city. Take the example of Mr Huang. In his early 30s, Mr Huang had suffered a severe injury to his leg, which meant he was unable to carry heavy goods or stand for hours on end. Lacking the education needed for jobs other than the typical ones open to migrants, such as working in a restaurant, construction site or factory, he had lived on Guangzhou's streets for three years, singing and begging for money and collecting recyclables.Footnote 59 Illness not only means the loss of work and income but also the additional cost of treatment. Medical expenses are still the “number one poverty generator”Footnote 60 for more than 40 per cent of households below the poverty line.Footnote 61
Research indicates that most of those who engage in panhandling are rural migrants and thus are not eligible for urban welfare or related benefits owing to the hukou system.Footnote 62 Moreover, these people bear witness to China's unequal regional development. Since the Hu–Wen administration, the expansion of dibao, health insurance programmes and the provision of public goods in the countryside have been massively promoted; however, such public goods are often limited by the budgets of each region.Footnote 63 Thus, poorer provinces or counties pay less state support and provide fewer hospitals or retirement homes. To offer another example, 70-year-old Mr Bang was unable to secure a place at his local retirement home as it was poorly funded and overcrowded. He received dibao payments of 60 yuan a month – about half of the national average – which was insufficient to cover the costs of accommodation, food and medicine in his village. Therefore, he went to a prosperous city such as Guangzhou to panhandle. Mr Bang's wife had died several years before and he had no children.Footnote 64 In a survey conducted by Lu Guoxian and colleagues, it was found that 77 per cent of the 130 beggars interviewed in Guangzhou and four other cities were unmarried and 46 per cent were childless.Footnote 65 These figures are unusually high for China. For the majority of my interviewees, the family was not a pillar of support: parents were deceased or too old, siblings and other relatives had turned their back or could not support the disabled family member on their own low income. Some had lost contact with their families during migration; others had no money to keep in touch or return home. Some did not dare to return home without a successful migration story. They were ashamed, did not want to ask for help or to burden anyone. Mr Gang was a 23-year-old man of restricted growth with five siblings. For him, however, panhandling by singing was a reasonable way to “fight for myself” (ziji fendou 自己奋斗), for his own livelihood and his independence.Footnote 66
From Assistance to Control: Criminalizing Panhandlers in Public Space
Since panhandlers do not necessarily go to the assistance stations (and the police no longer have the authority to enforce attendance), the stations’ “mobile assistance teams” (liudong jiuzhu dui 流动救助队) are supposed to patrol the city's public spaces. These teams are only allowed to give out information about the stations’ services, distribute brochures or “counsel and persuade” (quandao 劝导) those defined as panhandlers to accept their help.Footnote 67 Local newspapers carry stories about the teams distributing moon cakes in autumn or blankets in winter. However, the teams only play a minor role in the everyday life of beggars, as their numbers are restricted and only increased for specific events. In four years, I only saw them once – during the “hygienic city” campaign. Since 2015, Guangzhou's assistance stations have been buying in the additional services of social enterprises, setting up non-profit organizations and mobilizing “volunteers” (zhiyuanzhe 志愿者) as part of the drive to expand the “civic welfare infrastructure.”Footnote 68 In 2019, staff from the 17 social enterprises engaged in assistance stations’ work mainly participated in patrols “to establish a good relationship with vagrants and beggars, and then to persuade them to leave or return to their hometowns.”Footnote 69 Moreover, they supported the stations’ efforts to build up a comprehensive file system supplemented by fingerprints and DNA testing, face recognition software and family tracing apps.Footnote 70 Both the mobile assistance teams and these social workers approached those who did not qualify, or who did not wish to be “assisted,” which goes against the terms of the 2003 Measures.Footnote 71
Why do these patrols extend their authority in this way? And if repatriation is ineffective, why does it form the core of the assistance stations’ approach? Guangzhou's local committee of the political consultative conference offers a familiar explanation: “The welfare and management work for drifting and begging persons is not only about social welfare but also about social control.”Footnote 72 Similar to the continuing hukou system, “assisting” panhandlers is a means to shape the growth and “quality” (suzhi 素质) of the urban population and to keep out rural poverty and migrants. The stations have not shaken off the legacy of the CR system and still see themselves as a management agency to support the city's economy, security and cleanliness.Footnote 73 Chinese scholars and government actors alike emphasize that beggars reflect badly on a city as they contradict the image of a prosperous metropolis: “Their clothes are worn out, their appearance is dirty, and the contrast with a beautiful urban environment could not be greater.”Footnote 74 This is especially true for Guangzhou with its international perspective and its dreams of becoming a global city. A city's image affects on its monetary and political interests, and panhandling might endanger investments as well as political careers. According to Eric Henry, the visibility of panhandlers challenges the very self-understanding of an emerging China, as beggars represent “the cracks within the taken-for-granted doxa of modernity itself.”Footnote 75 Additionally, the discussion on welfare eligibility has fuelled the idea of the “professional beggar” (zhiye qigai 职业乞丐). Widely used in academia and the media, political discourses and social work arenas, the term connotes dishonesty and betrayal. It implies the person in need might exaggerate or fake an emergency, harass passersby, be rich or might be organized in a “beggar gang” or otherwise engage in criminal behaviour.Footnote 76 To portray beggars as “professional” serves as justification to withhold benevolence and tolerance.
Since the system's changes, Guangzhou city officials have been looking for new ways to approach panhandlers. Xu Zhigang and colleagues explain in a research report for the local government that “whether beggars accept assistance is their freedom of choice, but let us assume their actions influence the city image, then they must accept control by chengguan officers.”Footnote 77 Following this logic, panhandling is criminalized by defining related behaviour as an administrative offence: “If you sleep on the street, you affect the daily life of the residents. If you stop cars on the street [to beg], you affect the traffic. If you beg by force, hold passersby, spit on the street, leave rubbish, make a mess of the environment, violate hygiene rules, etc., we will punish you according to the law.”Footnote 78 These words, by the-then mayor Zhang Guangning 张广宁, were translated into regulations on public cleanliness and traffic control in 2004 and in subsequent years. These regulations also use catch-all phrases and are aimed at beggars who display “uncivilized behaviour,” “disturb order in public places,”Footnote 79 “disturb others,” “affect the cityscape and environment,”Footnote 80 or else might affect it.Footnote 81 The national government supports this approach. In 2009, the Ministry of Civil Affairs defined typical forms of panhandling in China, such as singing or writing on the pavement with chalk, as noise nuisance and environmental pollution.Footnote 82 By determining that the visibility of beggars is a problem for the “shirong” 市容 (city landscape), responsibility for their control shifts to the chengguan.Footnote 83 Following the general governance logic on public space, beggars are therefore expelled according to zones and rhythms of prestige and popularity.Footnote 84
Guangzhou's local regulations forbid panhandling in areas of tourism, commerce, political representation, transport, and at parks, theatres, schools and hospitals.Footnote 85 Those who do not comply with the request to leave are liable to prosecution.Footnote 86 Both the chengguan and the police participate in mobile assistance team patrols and increase their cooperation with the assistance stations whenever Guangzhou is under the spotlight. Figure 1 shows the state actors’ efforts approaching beggars in the name of “assistance.” During the preparations for the Asian Games, cases were double the number compared to four years previously and rose to more than 45,000 in 2009; in 2010, 54 per cent of all cases were approached within the one month the Asian Games took place.Footnote 87 Moreover, cases of repatriation increased as well, to 18,823 in 2009. One interviewee, Mr Qi, stated that during the Asian Games, patrols had picked him up against his will, given him a train ticket and accompanied him to the platform to ensure his departure.Footnote 88 The upward trends of “assistance” in the following years correspond with the “civilized city” campaign (2011) and several stages of the “hygienic city” campaign (2013–2016).
The pandemic occurred at a time when the Guangdong Bureau of Civil Affairs had already been struggling with hygiene standards and treatment within the assistance stations and the settlement centres.Footnote 89 Subsequently, those living on the streets were of particular concern in terms of health: “Vagrants and beggars are at high risk of pneumonia from the novel coronavirus infection owing to their homelessness, mobility and low awareness of protection.”Footnote 90 The aim was to prevent the spread of the virus within the stations and on the streets of Guangzhou. Several new regulations and guidelines stipulated hygiene measures and staff training, as well as regular testing.Footnote 91 Those who showed signs of Covid-19 were forced to quarantine in either an assistance station or in guarded hotels. Reports at the district level show how the patrols measured fever, distributed masks, dismantled and disinfected outdoor sleeping arrangements.Footnote 92 While patrols in general increased in number and frequency,Footnote 93 chengguan and police patrols were also given the authority to take panhandlers directly to an assistance station.Footnote 94 The pressure on beggars increased as they were reportedly “escorted” (husong 护送) by patrols, a phrase which, according to Sapio, is a euphemism for forced removal.Footnote 95
In alignment with the Ministry's “special plan,” mentioned above, Guangzhou's assistance stations have continued with their efforts at repatriation and technical surveillance since migration was allowed to resume in mid-2020.Footnote 96 Security cameras additionally monitor public space for signs of beggars and homeless people, while panhandling-related behaviour has been criminalized.Footnote 97 Collecting trash – an important income source for people living on the streets – was made illegal in February 2020 in the name of cleanliness and hygiene.Footnote 98 In effect, the pandemic has served as an additional reason to continue past governance trends of control to make beggars leave the city and its public space.
Conclusion
The governance of beggars presents the Chinese state with a paradox, particularly in terms of images, symbols and stereotypes. Panhandlers appear both pitiable and dangerous at the same time and so the respective institutions under the Ministry of Civil Affairs oscillate between welfare and control. Their solution is to expel beggars from public spaces and the city. Even though the CR system was abolished in 2003, the institution and part of its self-understanding live on today. The contradictory nature of the succeeding assistance stations is best elucidated by the ideas surrounding “professional beggars”: they do not come under assistance stations’ area of responsibility and yet many of the stations' activities reference them. “Real beggars” are to be supported but the system is not geared towards their needs. Panhandling is not a crime, yet it is prohibited and punishable under the banner of urban aesthetics. These administrative frictions go beyond the understanding of implementation gaps from the central to the local state. They expose inter-institutional conflicting goals which lead to areas of state-infused informality.
Moreover, the governance of panhandlers represents an example of the state favouring and welcoming certain segments of the urban population – the young, wealthy and well-educated – over others (such as rural migrants), a policy which affects various groups on the social margins. Beggars are now being pushed out of the city and its public spaces.Footnote 99 This development is embedded in a larger context of imagined modernity, the meaning of reform and opening up, of wealth and of poverty. On the one hand, the social system has been expanded since the Hu–Wen administration; on the other, the system carries neoliberal notions of self-reliance and self-responsibility. During the era of Mao Zedong 毛泽东, beggars on urban streets were a sign that the government and the political-economic system were in the wrong. Today, Chinese researchers argue that panhandling is a “worldwide phenomenon which has occurred throughout the ages” and is an expected side effect of urbanization.Footnote 100 Thus, the state is not to blame. Lichao Yang and Robert Walker point to a shift in the Chinese view of poverty that occurred during the reform process, away from blaming bad governance towards finding individual fault.Footnote 101 The effect has been observed in other places of the world as well: “the more that citizens attribute poverty to personal failings, rather than to social injustices or the economic structure, the less tolerant they will be of beggars.”Footnote 102
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for the funding provided by the DFG SPP “Megacities - megachallenge: informal dynamics of global change,” the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. I also thank my colleagues at the Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, Free University Berlin, University of Cologne, Goethe University Frankfurt and the Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg for their support and helpful discussions regarding the research.
Conflicts of interest
None
Ryanne FLOCK is a research associate at the Contemporary Chinese Studies at Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, Germany. She is currently undertaking postdoc research as a member of the project “Social worlds: China's cities as spaces of worldmaking,” funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). She focuses on processes of modernization and urbanization, and the reciprocity of space and society in China. Flock received her PhD in Chinese studies from the Free University Berlin in 2021.
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