Trending Terms, Income Inequality, and China’s Private Sector – The Diplomat

On June 22, a search engine showed a term that is also the title of an article:Manner Coffee founders have a combined net worth of 7.2 billion yuan, making them members of the Hurun 2024 list of the world’s richest people” became popular on the Chinese internet and was ranked fourth on the Baidu Hot Search list that day.

The search term comes from two incidents at Manner Coffee outlets in Shanghai that occurred on June 17 and went viral on the Chinese internet. In one case, a male staff member physically got old with a client, while being in another place, the employee poured out coffee grounds on the table.

Although Manner Coffee quickly issued an apology, assuring the public of the need to increase employee training, raise awareness of service, improve store operations to reduce customer wait times and improve barista well-being, the incidents have sparked heated debate online.

Most internet users sided with the workers. Some even revealed information about difficult working conditions, with one alleged former barista complaining that every employee has to 500 cups coffee in eight hours, leaving them no time to use the restroom. The former barista also said that the staff Paid Parking weakly, only 4000 Chinese yuan (approximately $550) during the two-month internship.

Manner Coffee first opened in 2015 as a single stall on a road in Shanghai. expanded dramatically to more than 1,000 locations across China by October 2023. Its rapid growth has coincided with a period when China’s coffee industry was dominated by major players such as Starbucks, Luckin and Cotti. The brand stands out by targeting a younger audience and has become known for its creamy white coffees, chic store design and prices that are 30 to 40 percent lower than Western chains.

Unlike the first wave of debates that focused primarily on what was right and wrong in the behavior of baristas and customers, this popular search term places particular emphasis on the wealth of the founders of Manner Coffee. The article to which the search term refers is structured to create innuendo. begins recounting incidents at two Manner Coffee outlets in Shanghai, quoting former baristas complaining about working conditions and low pay. It ends by noting that “the founder of Manner Coffee frequently appears on various billionaire lists.” The article clearly aims to indirectly direct public anger at the founders’ enormous accumulated wealth by emphasizing the contrast between the founders’ wealth and the impoverishment of typical workers.

The huge gap in income inequality between a company’s top executives and its average workers is not limited to China. According to test According to the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. CEOs were paid 399 times more than the average worker in 2021. What’s unique about Manner Coffee is that the popular title and the article itself are clearly government-approved, as many mainstream news sources like Xinhua, SohuAND Tencent Newsposted the exact same title and content on their websites. As a result, it effectively created a public furor against the founder of Manner Coffee. Comments posted under a popular search term accuse the founders of being “capitalists who exploit the blood and sweat of working people.”

This is further evidence of Beijing’s bias and hostility towards the private sector, despite its supportive rhetoric.

On the one hand, Beijing is sending positive signals, trying to boost confidence among private sector enterprises. In 2024, two executive meetings of the State Council were held, one February 2nd and the second one on April 26which focused on “further optimizing the business environment,” particularly building a “market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized, first-class business environment.” In the same year, China also began development of the Act on the Promotion of the Private Economy, which would regulate the equal treatment of state-owned, private and foreign enterprises, while protecting the property rights of private entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, private participation in overall business investments dropped from a peak of almost 60 percent in 2014 to just 50 percent in 2023, as Chinese government policies have consistently favored state control of the economy at the expense of private companies. Since 2013, the state sector expandedand since 2021, political oversight has been tightened and regulatory repression of the private sector has been introduced. This repression has been justified under the slogan of “Shared Prosperity”, a political slogan promoted by Beijing to strengthen social equality and economic justice.

The insinuation in a popular search term related to the Manner Coffee case is another example of how China’s support for the private sector is often just lip service and sometimes self-contradictory.