ANN VEECK TAblE 5.2 Food Expenditures as a proportion of Household Income, Nanjing, 1996 Mean household Percentage of Number in samp Household income food household income (olal-330) ( monthly in rmb)·( monthly in rmb)· spent on/od 750 or below 501 380653 75l-1.000 l,001-1,500 611 l.50l-2000 690 7609 2,001-3,000 811 s,00】 or above 91 12 18 At the time of the survey i rmb= U.Sfo125. SOURCE: Author's survey chance to compare quality and price. Prices are established through negoti- ation by each vendor with each consumer. Paying the "proper price"for food items requires some skill on the part of the consumer, since the price depends on a wide range of factors. These factors can include the season of the year, the time of day, the freshness of the food item, the place of origin of the food item, the weather condition at the time of purchase, the market in which it is sold and the price set by the competition in the immediate vicinity But the most notable characteristic of Nanjing food markets is the amount of time and money that Nanjing consumers spend at these sites. My survey of Nanjing households in 1996 found that the mean amount of time spent food shopping by primary food shoppers was almost six hours a week. In ad dition, although this proportion is expected to decrease in the future with growing incomes and increased sp old spending in Nanjing was allocated the mid i ggos, a full half of househ to food, a figure consistent with the national average. A closer look at these statistics, however, shows that while 52 percent is the average proportion of household budget allocated to food. the percentage spent by individual households varies greatly. Table 5.2 shows how food budgets change with in- come level. As expected, as incomes rise, food expenditures also increase Even more dramatic, however, is the inverse relationship between income level and proportion of income spent on food. The lowest-income house holds spend 77 percent of their budget on food, and the highest-income households only 18 percent. This disparity shows that higher-income indi viduals tend to use their extra income to supplement expenditures other than the familv meal 9. World Resources Institute 1994
REVITALIZATION OF 'TIIE MARKETPLACH THIE STATE AND 'THE MARKETPL.ACE The food markets in Nanjing provide a vehicle for studying the complex, si multaneously cooperative and competitive relationships that developed be tween the state and private enterprises throughout China in the i ggos. Each food market is a collection of hundreds of individual entrepreneurs. Thev are regulated by a commercial administrative office that is a branch of the government, which in each market is responsible for licensing vendors, pro- lecting legal transacTions, protecting the rights of consumers, mediating dis- putes between vendors, and maintaining the cleanliness of the market. Al- though the state no longer issues food coupons to consumers, the influence of the state in the food purchases of consumers is still visible and profound When the"free"markets for food first appeared in Nanjing in the early 1g8os, the vendors were farmers who brought their own wares to the nar- kets, selling the produce that they had grown in excess of their commitment to the state at whatever price the market would bear. By the mid igos,ow- ingto the monthly fee of several hundred renminbi to rent a space in the market, the farmers had been largely replaced by middlemen who buy pro- duce at Nanjing's wholesale markets. Although many of these middlemen are froim farm families, often from northern iangsu or nearby Anhui Pro- vince, they sell other families' crops that they acquire daily from Nanjing's wholesale market 1o Some food markets in Nanjing provided a special area where farmers could vend their own wares for a daily rate. Consumers often preferred to buy di rectly from the farmers, believing that farmers are more trustworthy than ven- dors. Yet it seems clear that in the future consumers will have fewer oppor- tunities to buy directly from farmers as commercially organized middlemen take over the vendor spaces. In 1996. when the then biggest indoor food mar ket opened in Nanjing, the first of eight planned for that year, businesspeo- le from Shanghai, Suzhou, and guangdong had ordered counter space. The state also played the leading role in deciding where new markets were to be located and which markets were allowed to operate. In older neigh- borhoods, markets were usually conveniently located and within bicycling or even walking distance from peoples homes. In the newer residential ar- eas, food markets were distributed much more sparsely. The location of food markets has a fundamental effect on the food shopping patterns of con- 10. Qu Huahan and Yuanshen Wu 1996. In the i ggos farmers could be seen arriving at the Nanjing food markets, sometimes carrying hundreds of kilograms of vegetables on their shoulders. Because they risked being fined by the market administrators for sellin ng wares illc gally. these farmers often were forced instead to sell their wares to the market vendors for low prices to avoid paying a fine and having their goods confiscated 11. Wang Yong and Zhi Long 1996