ABSTRACT
For Hong Kong citizens, unlimited travel across the border is relatively straightforward with a ‘Home Return Permit’. Mainland Chinese citizens are subject to different layers of internal border control depending on their place of origin, and the purpose and the duration of their visit to Hong Kong. Paradoxically, under the gradual liberalization of internal border control and economic integration since 1997, the increasing flow of citizens across the border has led to the heightened visibility of border trading – a longstanding grey market – and in the process, heightened tensions of social political identities and exclusionary sentiments. The chapter examines the emergence and consequences of the internal border paradox through a case study of the criminalization and policing of cross-border parallel trading of infant milk formula in Hong Kong. The anxieties surrounding parallel trading in the border towns of Hong Kong reflect the wider tensions and contradictions under the ‘one country, two systems’ regime.
