HONG KONG is renowned as one of the world’s freest markets, but some of its residents wish it was not quite so open to shoppers from the Chinese mainland. On February 15th about 200 protesters, chanting "mainlanders go back to the mainland", heckled visitors to a suburban mall who appeared to be compatriots from across the border on a buying spree in the territory. Resentful Hong Kongers call such shoppers "locusts" because they strip shelves of goods and clog public transport, often as part of organised rackets involving the resale of their purchases on the mainland. "Parallel trading", as this dodgy practice is described in Hong Kong, is fuelling a backlash.
The protest (pictured above) in Sha Tin district followed a similar one a week earlier in Tuen Mun, another suburb which is also a short hop from the border. Both areas are common targets for parallel traders, a term used to refer both to the shoppers as well as to the shadowy network of go-betweens who hire them to buy goods in Hong Kong and carry them over the border. It is, from the mainland's perspective, crowdsourced smuggling, which takes advantage of Hong Kong’s low prices (unlike...Continue reading
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