Sheung Shui – Illicit Trade District in Hong Kong Boxes of groceries including formula milk for babies are distributed out in the open to hired individual Mainland tourists with multiple-entry visas and locals. They then bring the goods on the northern-bound East Rail in Sheungshui to Lo Wu in Shenzhen, just one stop away. At peak hours, the queue of these shady couriers snakes outside the train station and riding with them in the same compartment gives one a taste of what it feels like to be stuffed inside a cargo container surrounded by stacks of goods jammed inside the train. With the patron of PRC customs officer and the help of lax implementation of baggage restriction, what you see here has been a daily recurrence in Sheung Shui, thus turning it into a seedy illicit trade district. The trade was fuelled by the anxiety of Mainlanders on food safety in China, which created a market on the Mainland for import goods. The convenience of multiple-entry visas that many living in Shenzhen have, plus the addition of cash-strapped Hongkoners, makes Hong Kong a natural choice for Mainland shop owners to evade heavy import tax imposed in China to hire Mainland tourists and locals as goods couriers that ply between Sheung Shui and Lo Wu several times a day. Restriction on formula milk, two cans each passenger, was in force early this year. But the illicit trading activities come back with growing intensity.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:00:22 +0000
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