As informality has become a mode of urbanization in the Global South, the state’s role in urban informality is in a constant state of challenge and discussion. Following that stance of thought, this thesis is an endeavor to decode the facts of the Chinese urban state from an informal food market, Guanting Street, Hefei. Respectively through a political-economic and an ethnographic perspective, this thesis demonstrates how city bureaucrats from different agencies have been exerting power on Guanting Street. suggest that the history of the state formally retreating from the street in 2015 has shaped the power landscape on Guanting into “differentiated statenesses”. In this field, numerous local bureaucrats with different levels of formality relationally practice their power, weaving the Chinese state in urban informality into an ambiguous assemblage that maintains the spatio-temporal order on the street.