A Nanjing newsstand (see story #11 )
Nanjing has decided that news kiosks are a blight on the city.
Erected on the roadway, they create yet another unnecessary obstacle to the growing number of cars on the streets. Moved to the sidewalk, they pose a risk to blind pedestrians.
The plan, which was circulated among vendors this summer in the form of removal notices, has been roundly criticized by Nanjing media outlets, pundits, and Internet users. Where will Nanjingers buy their news from now on? Who will be responsible for the news vendors who are put out of work by the demolitions? What good does it do anyone it a newsstand is moved from a major thoroughfare to an out-of-the-way side street?
The reigning interpretation is that the government is more concerned with the city’s image than the livelihood of its population. One alternative suggested by the chengguan, the city management administration that is in charge of the removals, is for news vendors to rent space in supermarkets and other fixed stores. That option has its own problems:
“Inside operations” means encouraging supermarkets and other stores to sell newspapers and magazines. But operating costs are high, and they must pay taxes. A supermarket salesperson told this reporter that a news stall would occupy about two square meters, a space that could be rented from the supermarket for 30,000 RMB per month. Mr. Jiang, who has operated a newsstand for a decade, told this reporter that a newsstand can make at most around 4,000 RMB per month, so the cost to entry is far too high for them. As a result, very few newsstand proprietors have moved into supermarkets.
Other observers have expressed doubts about whether supermarkets will open their doors at 6 in the morning to allow commuters to buy the morning paper on the way to work.
Nanjing’s bid to rid the city of street-side newsstands is not without precedent. When Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, wiped out newsstands in 2001, city authorities also mentioned city beautification, and in 2007, the local planning bureau issued a notice recommending that vendors rent space in supermarkets and other stores. According to The Beijing News, which ran a lengthy story on the situation, the income from periodical sales was far less than what it would cost to rent a stall inside a store. The city’s readers ended up getting their news from temporary, mobile stalls: a board thrown over a cart.
The Yangtse Evening Post reports that in a number of locations across the city, news vendors whose kiosks have been demolished have returned with carts laden with newspapers and magazines to serve a clientele that still requires print media. Ironically, the Nanjing government had eliminated these news carts a decade ago by encouraging the erection of free-standing news kiosks, in line with The Notice on the Establishment of Newspaper and Periodical Sales Kiosks in Cities and Towns Across the Country, issued in 2000 by the Civilization Office, Ministry of Construction, Ministry of Public Security, State Administration for Industry and Commerce, General Administration of Press and Publication, and the State Post Bureau.
With that notice still in effect, critics of the Nanjing government’s demolition plans have accused it of violating national policy and going against the “spirit of building socialist spiritual civilization.”
The Yangtse Evening Post published an interesting look back at the recent history of news vending in Nanjing:
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