China: Making Free Enterprise Click

It is shortly before 8 a.m. in Harbin, a city of 2 million in northern China. Bai Shiming, 29, an energetic young bachelor, is preparing to open his shop, the Xiurong photographic studio. Bai sports a gray, Western-style suit and light tan shirt but no tie. He checks to see that all the lights are working properly, then readies his ancient-looking plate camera. A few minutes later the first customers arrive, usually in groups of two or three. Most request simple unsmiling head shots, but for more elaborate wedding pictures, Bai can provide a white dress with train.

Bai is of a rare breed: an urban entrepreneur working in direct competition with the state. With the help of a brother and sister, Bai handles 80 to 100 customers a day in his neat, red-painted studio, which he keeps open until 8 p.m. seven days a week. He works in the darkroom until midnight, processing the negatives and retouching them to eliminate warts, wrinkles and other unflattering features. “I don’t rest,” Bai says. “Even during festivals, I never close.” Bai usually charges less than one yuan (500) for a portrait, undercutting prices at the state-run photographic studio up the street. After paying rent, salaries and buying supplies, Bai nets between 180 and 200 yuan ($90 to $ 100) a month. While hardly a princely sum, that is three times the average urban worker’s salary. As Bai is quick to note, it is also higher than the wages of each of his three other brothers, a boilermaker, a security guard and a storekeeper. Bai conspicuously enjoys being his own master. Says he: “We can work, or we can stop working.”

The basic skills came from Bai’s father, a photographer who was employed in a state-owned studio. Bai worked at odd jobs as a laborer and a painter until 1979, when the government began to encourage people to go into business for themselves. His assets were meager: some photographic equipment and furniture from the 1950s left to him by his father. But the state made things click by offering a three-year tax exemption. “I was nervous whether I could make money or not,” Bai said. “People don’t like to start things on their own.” Although Bai initially feared that the leadership’s enthusiasm for private enterprise might wane, he is convinced that it will not, at least for the time being. “I now firmly believe the policy is reliable,” he says.

Bai attributes his success to lower prices, higher quality and his willingness to work long hours. To express his gratitude to the government for giving him the opportunity to launch his own business and improve his family’s status, he joined the Communist Party last year. On the wall of his waiting room, he proudly displays the evidence of his success: a framed certificate of his designation by provincial authorities as a “model worker” and a carefully mounted photo of himself with hundreds of other young Chinese who attended a party meeting in Peking last summer. In the picture, Bai is seated near General Secretary Hu Yaobang. Says Bai: “I expressed thanks to Hu Yaobang on behalf of the people of the province.”

Ever since Harbin’s newspaper began to publish stories about him, Bai has become a local celebrity. He smiles ruefully as he describes how scores of young people have walked into his shop just to meet him. “Some ask me for advice,” he says. “Some ask me to teach them, some show an interest in my life.” Bai has also received more than 300 fan letters, including a few marriage proposals.

Despite his pride in being the first member of his family to achieve such success, Bai remains pessimistic about the future of free enterprise in China. He believes that while private ownership may be an immediate necessity, state control will provide more economic growth in the long run. “As a theory, private enterprise is opposed to Marxism,” he explains. “But in China at this stage, we need all sorts of forms of production. As socialism develops toward Communism, my job will be less and less important.” What will Bai do then? “With the development of bigger factories run by the state,” he responds, “I can get a job there.”