Peking Police Arrest Profiteering Vendors
Chinese officials cracking down on profiteering arrested seven soft-drink vendors, including one who allegedly stabbed a customer who refused to pay 10 times the officially fixed rate for a soft drink, the English-language China Daily said Monday.
The seven were charged with assault in three separate incidents that occurred in April and May outside the Military Museum in Peking, the paper said.
On May 11, it said, a trader stabbed a customer in the stomach after the victim refused to pay the equivalent of 50 cents for a bottle of club soda, 10 times the officially fixed rate.
It added that police at the Xijiao Market handled more than 170 cases of vendors beating up customers, government inspectors and even a Chinese reporter between February and mid-May.
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