By Julie Makinen | Los Angeles Times/TNS

BEIJING—To take stock of the Chinese economy, you can look at any number of traditional measures: GDP is growing at a slower pace, the equity markets are plunging and the currency’s value is ebbing.

And now there’s another indicator of change: The rent-a-foreigner market appears to be weakening and going downscale.

Just a few years ago, foreigners who came to China to study or teach English were in high demand. Agencies hired them to pose as scientists, architects, engineers and models to lend an “international,” high-class flair to news conferences, meetings and sales pitches, thereby, goosing business transactions. The phenomenon was, in many ways, a symptom of—and further fuel for—go-go growth built on dubious foundations.

The jobs were often absurd: One expat, Mitch Moxley, was paid $1,000 to pose as a “quality-control expert” representing a nonexistent California-based company; he chronicled his experience in a 2010 piece for The Atlantic headlined “Rent a White Guy.”

In 2008 a Scottish woman was hired to pretend to be an oil tycoon at a petroleum-drilling conference in Shandong province. “We just had to be at the dinner and an opening ceremony—we were told not to mention that we live in China,” she said, requesting anonymity to avoid damaging her future employment prospects.

A few years ago, “professional foreigners” in Chengdu could make about $160 to $220 “for just a few hours of standing around”—enough to cover a month’s rent, said David Borenstein, the director of a TV documentary about the phenomenon called China Dreamland.

Cultural confidence

BUT times are changing. Especially in larger metropolises, the practice seems to have waned.

The factors behind the shift are complex, but may include a corruption crackdown, the increasing sophistication of the Chinese consumer and growing scrutiny from authorities and cultural critics.

“The slowdown in the foreigner industry has made it really hard for a lot of good people who were supporting their families as professional laowai,” said Borenstein, using the Chinese word for foreigners. He calculates rates have fallen by as much as 75 percent.

Zhang Yiwu, a professor of Chinese literature and language at Peking University, called on companies last year to abandon rent-a-foreigner gigs. After 30 years of economic reform and opening, he wrote in an op-ed in the Global Times newspaper, China needs to have more “cultural confidence” and halt this “absurd phenomenon.”

Max Liu, founder of Fun Model Management, said the rent-a-foreigner fad in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai has worn off.

“It’s less and less in Beijing and Shanghai, because people are used to seeing foreigners,” he said. “But still, if you go to cities like Wuhan, Chengdu, those people there, it’s like ‘Oh, you brought someone from abroad, they must be an expert in something.’”

Practical joke

IN China’s so-called first-tier cities, the casual gigs that expats are getting have become more campy and lowbrow. Last summer a company called Sweetie Salad grabbed attention when it hired dozens of foreign men to dress up as Spartans—wearing skin-tight shorts, sandals, capes and little else—to promote its delivery service in Beijing.

The appliance retailer Suning—sort of a Chinese Best Buy—made headlines this month with a PR stunt in which foreigners were hired not as faux PhDs, but for the menial job of delivering packages ahead of the busy Chinese New Year holiday.

In both cases, Chinese authorities were not amused. The Spartan spectacle was quickly brought to an end by Beijing police, who detained the performers for “disrupting public order.” And publicity around the deliverymen gigs prompted immigration officials to investigate whether some of Suning’s temp workers were violating the terms of their student visas.

Still, in a racially homogeneous society like China’s, and particularly in smaller cities, foreigners still are objects of fascination. Suning’s marketing stunt grabbed the attention of the Chinese press, which seemed intrigued by the notion that expats might stoop to delivering packages.

The state-run China Daily ran not one but two stories on Suning’s recruitment drive, splashing a photo of Minnesotan Samuel Keith across the front page on January 29.

Akmal Abdurakhimov, 21, a Muscovite enrolled at the China University of Petroleum, indicated that the work had an almost minstrel flavor: “People open the door, see me and go, laowai!” he said, recounting how customers reacted to his presence as some sort of exotic practical joke.

Which, in some sense, may have been true.

Hardly stratospheric

KEITH, a 26-year-old Mandarin student at Peking University who’s an international business major at the University of Arkansas, couldn’t read the addresses on the boxes, hardly speaks enough Chinese to call customers to see if they’re home, and is unfamiliar with Beijing’s streets.

“I’m supposed to knock on the door, and when the customer answers, pull this out and say, Xin Nian Kuai Le [Happy New Year],” Keith said, explaining his duties and awkwardly holding up a large red-and-gold decorative knot festooned with auspicious Chinese characters.

Although a regular Suning deliveryman held Keith’s hand every step of the way, it was still slow going.

In his first two days with Suning, Keith said he delivered just five or six packages—and gave as many interviews. At midday on Thursday, after Keith and his handholder, Li Yunwang, finally managed to deliver their first package with a gaggle of press in tow, Li turned to one reporter and said dryly, “Normally by this hour I’ve delivered 30 or 40.”