Making sales while the sun shines

Zhongguancun vendor Zhang Zheng tells a repeat customer who bought a BlackBerry to "come back next time" - but he may not be there.

The 26-year-old hawker says he's heard rumblings the government will push his ilk out of the area.

"The landlord has mentioned the transformation but hasn't told us much," he says. "We should be prepared to go."

Haidian district's government announced in 2009 it would drive Zhongguancun's small vendors out.

The move is contrived to replace the unregulated gray market, notorious for scams, with a high-grade science park to encourage creative high-tech enterprises to flourish.

One of the three largest markets in Zhongguancun, Taipingyang, was closed in June. The Hailong and Dinghao buildings are in the midst of reconfiguration.

The 95-hectare area hailed as "China's Silicon Valley" became an IT park in 1988 and a roost for electronics hawkers in the mid-1990s.

Zhang started selling BlackBerry devices in Zhongguancun in 2008, when it was a trend for young graduates to start their own businesses.

Rent for his counter in Dinghao has shot up from 3,300 yuan ($516) a month to more than 11,000 yuan.

About 50 percent of his turnover comes from selling wares on e-commerce websites like Taobao.com.

"I don't know where the new market will spring up if we have to leave," Zhang says.

"If it's too far from downtown, I'll give up my physical store and rely solely on online retailing."

The restructuring is largely incited by the amount of fake goods and scamming that have made Zhongguancun, perhaps, as infamous as it is famous.

Dong Shaotian is among the legion of bitter swindled customers. The Peking University undergraduate says he was overcharged by 1,000 yuan for a camera he bought at the market, to which he refuses to return.

"They don't even offer WiFi or I would have been able to know immediately I was cheated," Dong says.

"It's no good to keep such a chaotic place running."

Authorities have attempted to enhance regulations with such measures as creating a customer service center to supervise retailers. Policy states vendors who are the subject of too many complaints are shut down.

Beijing native Gao Hanmo, who now lives in the United States, recalls Zhongguancun sentimentally.

"Why not let the market determine the vendors' futures?" he says.

"It seems better to enhance regulation than drive them out."

Many retailers seem undaunted by their looming exodus.

"Look at the people swarming here," 28-year-old hawker Cui Xiaodi says.

"Customers are flooding in every day. If driven from here, we'll certainly pop up elsewhere. Shoppers need this kind of market. So, will things really change this time?"

Cui refuses to reveal the income he earns at the 10-square-meter stall he has run for three years, but says it's less than the market's average.

"Unlike me, millionaires here don't have time to talk if you're not buying anything," Cui says. He hoists on his back a pack of laptop accessories to deliver to customers.

"For them, it's always about money."

The country's Silicon Valley isn't the only wild market of its kind being clamped down on, as its cousins in second-tier cities face similar threats.

East China's largest electronics vending hub, Zhujiang Road in Jiangsu's provincial capital Nanjing, is among the clot of unruly markets city authorities are reinventing as they look to new development platforms.

But as the birthplace of the old model, Zhongguancun might also be where it heaves its death throes.

"It will take two or three years to replace peddlers with high-end retailers," Popular Computer Week quotes Hailong Building's general manager Gao Weihua as saying.

West Zhongguancun Management Committee's deputy director Tian Yichuan is quoted by the weekly as saying: "Only cheating vendors will lose much money. Sellers who legally operate businesses have nothing to fear."

Such words are abstractions to hawkers like Cui.

"We don't have time to worry about the future," he says. "If the policy isn't affecting us now, we'll focus on making money every day. In Zhongguancun, business is business."