Just how “wicked” is Beijing's waste problem? A response to “The rise and fall of a “waste city” in the construction of an “urban circular economic system”: The changing landscape of waste in Beijing” by Xin Tong and Dongyan Tao

•Historical and policy roots of current conflicts between China's formal and informal urban waste collection networks.•Spatial shifts and structural change of informal recycling spaces in Beijing since 1990s.•Proposal for inclusion of informal migrant recyclers as crucial stakeholders in China's urban waste management planning.

Tong and Tao's recent article makes the crucial argument that Beijing's informal rural migrants must be included as citizens and stakeholders if the city intends to successfully upgrade its waste management system. This article aims to deepen their critique, and challenge and clarify several points in their analysis of the system's development. It concludes that, while urban waste management is always a “wicked” problem, there are some fundamental issues of government mismanagement in China (namely systematic discrimination against rural migrants and municipal and sub-municipal government interests in maximizing land rents) that are by far the dominant reasons for the failure of government waste management policies.