The Homeless in Beijing

Walking around the streets of Beijing one is struck by the fact that there are few—if any—homeless people in this city. In fact, I only run into unkempt people who are begging for money with I’m in an area frequented by tourists and foreigners living in Beijing, or laowai. The reason for this is that the people who are posing as homeless and begging for money—most of whom are either small, dirty children, women with babies or the elderly—are, in fact, on the local government payroll. In exchange for begging and scamming money off of foreigners, these people are handsomely compensated by the government official or local strong man who is running the begging racket. Therefore, when one is in Beijing, he/she should be wary of giving the “homeless” money. It’s not that the money would be going to feed that individual’s substance abuse habit, it’s that the money will be lining the pocket of someone higher up the food chain. For those of you who are interested, the actually homeless people in Beijing look very unkempt and are easy to spot.
The fact that local strongmen/government officials are in charge of rackets aimed at scamming money off of unassuming foreigners is evidence that, as China has opened to the West and more foreigners have begun to live and travel in Chine, some local people are becoming more adept at hustling unsuspecting foreigners. While a foreigner was literally stopped, touched and stared at in the street 10 years ago, the same people who were staring 10 years ago are potentially the very people who are running these rackets today. The ability to scam a buck off of foreigners is also seen in the markets, where no local Chinese shop and where the prices are outrageously high by Chinese standards, yet still cheaper than you could find the same—yet genuine—product in the West. Yet I should close by saying that, for the most part, the Chinese are interested merely in talking to foreigners—very few have malicious intentions.