China’s small businesses bear the brunt of economic slump
- Entrepreneurs see-saw in and out of profitability as unpredictable economic changes flow downstream
- Individually run companies struggling to stay afloat despite official shows of support, prized role in spurring activity and consumption
Xu Doudou was caught between a rock and a hard place.
With less than 20 square metres (215 square feet) in a two-storey house in downtown Beijing, Xu opened a small cafe in March. She had hoped to seize the opportunity presented by the presumptive recovery of the world’s second-largest economy.
Running the cafe with the help of a few graduate students from lunch hour to after midnight was both tiring and fulfilling. But she lost confidence in late summer, after the tourism season came to an abrupt end.
“Tourists disappeared in the last week of August, so the business dropped dramatically,” she said. “It frightened me for the coming winter, which is usually the slack season for small catering businesses. People are spending less.”
She decided to close the cafe, and put up an advertisement in early September for potential tenants to take over the space.
