Part 2

Reflecting on the border experience

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border How should we think about borders? The history of human society is often seen through its borders and the conflicts that occur over them. The role of physical, social and political boundaries in forming collective and community identity are profound but not without limitations. Borderlands exist partially in contrast to internal areas of jurisdiction or heartlands of political control where the state or centre of power is able to stretch its muscles and emphasise its difference from other groups. Internal borders and barriers whether enforced though social, historical or economic practice or by a physical barrier, play an undeniable though debated role in shaping identity and practice both on each of their sides and across them. The Hong Kong Shenzhen boundary is a complex but strong barrier, enforced both physically by razor wire fencing with state of the art biometric checkpoints and socially though different economic and social histories and concepts of the role of the state and its relationship with its subjects. It is also a border land which is changing and evolving at a phenomenal rate, unrecognisable from one decade to the next. In the following, through my experiences of living alongside and across the border I explore some of the questions the border asks of those who cross it. Ways of observing the Borderland Forces performing and collaborating at the border:

Forces I observed performing and collaborating at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border Using pre-existing definitions of borderlands in the context of my experience has been a challenging personal journey for me. The previous descriptions and case studies of border users are presented through each users own framework of what the border means. The following discussion will expand these users experiences of the function of the border to include a wider understanding of the actors and actions that interact at the border. The above diagram identifies the key forces that I observed operating at or operated on by the Hong Kong Shenzhen border. These are production, labor and the powerful low cost model of production that sees this region described as the worlds workshop; Sovereignty with the added complexity of the one country two systems mandate; Social Capital both inherited and learned; Consumption that is defined by ones position in relation to the border; difference and identity, its fabrication only partially determined by individuals relationship with the state. All these social and economic forces are in some way mediated by the system of checkpoints and their selective practices at the border. The fence and checkpoint system function to mediate and divide these forces in different ways. For example they create comparative advantage and alter purchasing power; they rely on a system of allocating different rights and different privileges in an often arbitrary manner; and at this border in particular they intersect both continuous and competing senses of collective and individual identity. Borderlanders in the borderland milieu

Diagram based on Martinez 1994 (Martinez, 1994, pp. 10-15). Page 2 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border Oscar Martinezs 1994 book Border people: life and society in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is a key work in applying ethnography to the study of borderlands. Martinezs work is significant because from an auto-ethnographic position he presents easily visualised systemic maps of the nature and structure of the borderland milieu (Martinez, 1994). Martinez works with two key assumptions, the first that borders evolve over time in a progressive fashion, and that borders can be classified into as series of key types to allow active comparison. This idea is developed in another key article, Towards a Comparative History of Borderlands, which I read before undertaking my fieldwork (Baud & Schendel, 1997). Together they suggest the possibility of a standardised analysis of borders. This is both dangerous and seductive. Borders are a space of constant change. Not only are people and goods changed by crossing them but the more people cross or subvert the border the more the state must respond or adapt. Martinezs second more nuanced notion is an argument for dividing the border into segments. It places emphasis on the diverse but simultaneous interpretations of a single landscape and that your interpretation differs according to your location either at the interior or periphery of a state. Through detailed interviews of personal experiences he develops several border types to define the way the border is identified differently in different peoples lives. Martinezs work comes from intense life experiences and research within border spaces on the edge of societies that allow and expect high degrees of individual expression. Such a work would be possible at the Hong Kong Shenzhen border, and in my own research I saw trends that may have brought me to conclusions and labels as comprehensive as Martinez. Unfortunately addressing these are beyond the scope of this project. Borderlands as institutions and processes

Based on Anderson 1997 Pages 1-5 Social scientists traditionally view borders as either institution or process. The above diagram is drawn from the descriptions in Malcolm Andersons book Frontiers: Territory and State Formation, and is an effective example of the role of the social sciences in the understanding of borders (1997). Traditional references to borders place an emphasis on the role of defined state actors and their narratives in constructing border identities. These institutions and narratives are also used by states to justify actions and develop nationalist discourses. Traditional scholars of international security emphasize the role of borders and territorial integrity in excluding undesirable forces (Anderson M. , 1997, p. 25). The role of borders as markers of territory is critical to most 20th century nationalist discourses (See Anderson B. , 1991). Geographically the two great wars of the 20th century focused on a delineation of territory sovereignty within Europe and Asia, usually fought through trench warfare where possession of geographic territory was both practically and ideologically critical. It is difficult to forget the image of generals moving symbols on giant maps and the use of territorial outlines as the default symbol of state power when thinking about borders. In todays era of globalization where the system of nation states has become so highly ritualized and standardized though global bodies like the United Nations, we need to look at borders not only as sites of change but also as sites of consistency and subversion by individual and group actors. We also need to see borders in terms of Page 3 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border relationships of social capital mediated by state institutions (Chen, 2005, p. 4). Xingming Chen suggests we think of borders as artifacts that are constantly de-bordering and re-bordering due to external and local factors (Chen, 2005, p. 4). Borders as semi-permeable membrane

(Corell Institute of Medical Research) Another way of conceptualizing the border is by considering it though the analogy of a biological cell. Biological cells typically contain a nuclei surrounded by a fluid and protected membrane. This membrane is selectively permeable and can be seen as an analogy for the modern dynamic border. This concept is a personal synthesis of several topical ways of describing and conceptualizing borders. These are as filters (Ratti 1993 in (Breitung, 2002, p. 1752)), as narrative performance (Prokkola, 2009; Khosravi, 2007), as enclosures (Cunningham & Heyman, 2004), as nodes in a world system (Heyman, 2007; Cresswell, 2006), as activity spaces (Breitung, 2009), as dams and sluice gates (Lin & Tse, 2005, p. 869) and as time-space punctuation (Smart & Smart, 2008). The image of an active cell is an effective way to visualize not only how borders are dependent on inclusion and exclusion but that they are living, changing and adaptive structures constantly striving for homeostasis against competing individuals and groups of individuals. Borders are more complex than the proverbial line in the sand intended by their historical authors. It is this dynamic complexity that I hope the following discussion will address.

Sovereignty The anthropology of borders is thus also the anthropology of state power and practice (Donnan & Wilson, 1999). Page 4 of 67

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Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border 1st of July 1997: Reunification or Takeover? The relationship between the people of Hong Kong and their masters is built on a relationship between the centre and the periphery. As a British territory Hong Kong was far from the centre of British power: as a Semi Autonomous Region (SAR) of the Peoples Republic of China, it is also geographically, politically, culturally and linguistically separate from the centre. The importance of this centre-periphery relationship is often lost in popular discourses about Chinas recent economic growth. The notion that China represents a homogenous and unified culture is as inaccurate as declaring the United States to be homogonous in the same way. It is though unlike the United States which constantly debates the difference between state sovereignty and defined territory and national sovereignty and defined population (Barkin & Cronin, 1994, p. 108). For China whose state ideology and concept is directly linked to the views of a dozen or so men in Beijing, sovereignty involves not only effective control over a particular territory but also control over expressions of identity and ideology. Therefore identity in the state or centre ideology of the Peoples Republic of China is personal not pubic and should not compete with the state, and this concept is religiously enforced and often internalised. In Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong there is a history of resistance to the centre including in the colonial period and during the civil war that led the communists to power. This resistance is sometimes linked to its geographical isolation from northern centres of power. Hong Kongs historic and present role as an entre point to the Mainland and free trade zone though has been established through a long narrative of interdependence with Mainland China. The border has facilitated this interdependence by allowing sovereignty to be interpreted differently on its different sides, through permitting exceptions to dominant historical trends. This began with circumventing Imperial Beijings restrictions on trade and migration, continued though survival smuggling during the Communist famines and remains alive and well today as a reliable financial and trade centre with an international banking and legal culture1. This is in contrast with my previous education and understanding of borderlands that had been strongly shaped by the literature and personal experience of the United States-Mexico Border. This is a border that operates within a complex but much wider public notion of identity politics that permeates public life in the United States. It is an environment that allows individuals and minorities to seek their own individual or collective identity in competition with dominant state perceptions of identity, often in very public ways without coming into violent opposition to the American State itself2. These circumstances that allow for public acceptance of borderlanders (both living on the border and elsewhere challenging mainstream society) does not transfer as effectively to the Hong Kong Shenzhen border because the histories of sovereignty, identity and the relationship between state power and the individual is different. 1 Often referred to as a British Systems and seen as a positive legacy of colonialism by some

2 Here I mean violence in terms of use of state security apparatus. There are instances of violent confrontation at the United States Mexico border they are not normally related to protecting identity.

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border A day for celebration or protest? On the 1st of July 2009 I woke up on the 14th floor of an apartment building in Futian () Shenzhen (China), looking out south to the mountains of Hong Kong. At 8am in Beijing and Hong Kong there had been ceremonies for a select group of elite members of the Communist Party and invited guests. Triumphant although a tad militaristic, the ceremonies took place on the spot where the British governor had departed at midnight twelve years before, and celebrated the return in 1997 of Hong Kong to the Peoples Republic of China. As I picked up my breakfast from the noodle bar across the street you couldnt sense that this day was different from any other day. However I did notice as I approached the checkpoint that there was a larger than usual flow of travellers coming in the opposite direction, taking advantage of the public holiday in Hong Kong (and a normal working day in Shenzhen) to do some cross border shopping. I emerged from the Subway station in Causeway Bay, a trendy shopping district of Hong Kong Island after a forty minute subway ride. The crowds were obvious, taking my mind back to the previous month when I had come out of the same station for the Tiananmen Square 20th Anniversary Memorial. I met up with some other travellers outside the Victoria Park a little way down the street from the station, it was hot, well over 35 degrees. We followed the crowds milling about onto the nearby basket ball courts, where people were gathering. Here were groups of domestic workers calling for better conditions, South Asians born in Hong Kong calling for improved access to government jobs, groups calling for improved services for the mentally disabled, HIV/AIDS patients, victims of domestic violence and many others, assembling behind signs in highly organised sections preparing to leave in a pre determined order to march down Causeway Road along the main thoroughfare of Hong Kong Island. We tagged along with a group calling for reforms to the civil service entry exam and more funding for the local public broadcaster. Police guided the procession from the park onto the road. There was a carnival like atmosphere, with plenty of slogans calling for the resignation of the Chief Executive, but no malice. Civic duty not revolution was the message. That evening after dinner I caught a late night express bus with a friend from Wan Chai (Hong Kong) to Shenzhen (leaving 200 metres from the morning flag raising ceremony). There was almost no mention of the protest march in Shenzhen; it had been an ordinary working day. I knew of at least five people who had travelled from the mainland to Hong Kong to participate in the march; many of the leaders with loud speakers motivating the protesters reminded us, this is the only place on Chinese soil that you can do this. In brief, this story is one of the most eloquent but messy accounts of why the Hong Kong Shenzhen border is still there. It divides two ways that the state relates to its citizens. The paradox is that when I systematically asked my Hong Kong informants who commuted across the border why the border remained after the handover, the uniform answer was one that stressed its holding back the disorder and large low paid workforce at their doorstep. On pressing those who had been educated in the Mainland they suggested that it was also the role of the border to keep certain ideas or ideals out of China. However a constant theme of discussion everywhere was a well developed mistrust in the way the state related to the individual on the other side. Much of this has to do with historical discourses promoted by respective powers in Beijing and London during the post World War Two period. The crucial complaint of these protestors is that despite the obvious prosperity of Hong Page 6 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border Kong, they have never been asked, or had the opportunity to choose their own government. The questions the protestors might have asked after 1997 was: what changed? What is China? For me, pinning down a universally satisfactory definition of China in academic vernacular is impossible. That is not to say that China isnt represented a thousand times each day, not only by journalists and scholars but by kindergarten children and bank tellers as they use a suite of identity documents to get to school or work across the border. In jest many westerners with knowledge of the Chinese language transcribe the expression for China () literally as () Middle () Kingdom, just as you might string out United States of America to emphasize fractures in domestic American policy. Borders often highlight what some academics refer to as the great fiction of the ethnically and culturally homogenous nation state, if states are linked back to assertions of sovereignty or control over territory, and nations describes a community with a shared ethnicity, large modern states in practice are formed of many nations (Donnan & Wilson, 1999, p. 6). The Hong Kong-Shenzhen border is one that highlights the nature of a state constructed of many nations, and the role of nationalizing narratives, usually stories of war or struggle in this construction. As the timeline in Part One shows, while China claims a history of thousands of years over the same territory, this is a product of the 1950s and generally chooses to cover up the wounds of the brutal war that brought Mao Zedong to power. Contemporary Chinese nationalism was built on the rhetoric of world socialism, historical isolation, class struggle and extended political turmoil with limited discussions around issues of ethnic nationalism and Chinese identity. Modern post economic reform nationalism as we know it in China can in part be traced to a concerted propaganda effort following the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989 and the reform and opening up process which saw people searching for a practical ideology to replace National Socialism and class struggle. At the time of the founding of the modern Chinese state in 1949 by Mao Zedong there were two competing regimes that claimed to be custodians of the ongoing China narrative. Both had at some point sought refuge from the other in British controlled Hong Kong. Hong Kong with its pragmatic permanent multi-ethnic population had weathered the storms and impositions from the north for over a hundred years. Until the 1990s both sides, the Chiang-Kai-shek nationalists exiled in Taiwan and the Communists in Beijing made competing claims for a massively both linguistically and culturally area of eastern Asia. Today, Chiang-Kai-sheks son has handed control of their island refuge of Taiwan to democratic citizen rule while the mainland Peoples Republic of China remains ruled by the protges of an aging pool of those who accompanied Mao during the civil war. This group continues to assert itself as the owners of the Chinese Identity. Aihwa Ong interestingly problematizes this transnational Chinese identity as an underground empire in her discussions on the subject (See (Ong & Nonini, 1997; Ong, 1999). She is not alone in her discussion: many authors have spoken about the power of ethic networks in economic and social development (See (Chen, 2005; Smart, 1999). What makes the Shenzhen and Pearl River Delta situation fascinating is the role of Overseas Chinese (this includes Hong Kong residents in the language of the Chinese state) in providing the Page 7 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border capital and entrepreneurial skills required to transform a rural socialist backwater into a bustling metropolis in a matter of decades3. In the surface of the city you can see how initially this reengagement with Diaspora was constructed. Overseas Chinese Town was created as a central part of the Special Economic Zone to be the work unit in the early days of the opening up period for the Overseas Chinese whose capital and skills were desperately needed in a community only recently turning to the outside world (O'Donnell, 2001). Its architecture stands out because unlike other housing complexes in the city that almost always devote their bottom floor to retail, in Overseas Chinese Town there is a clear separation between the retail and residential zones. This state conceptualized home for the returned ethnic Diaspora has in practice become a home for nonDiaspora residents to attempt to experience the identity of the Diaspora, while the growth in commuting from Hong Kong and newer luxury resort style housing in more conveniently located parts of the city have become the preferred way for outsiders to structure their identity within the landscape. More traditional discussion on border crossing that appears to challenge State sovereignty focus on issues of legality around crossings (Martinez, 1994; Walters, 2006). The one country, two systems policy that makes the infrastructure of sovereignty different on either side of the border and justifies its existence means that crossing this border challenges sovereignty in different ways. As I discussed above representing China is a challenge. Under the one country two systems model, Hong Kong was allowed to keep its British installed constitution, and in a crude sense become an imperial possession of Beijing, much in the same way as it had been of London, including a semi-appointed leader (aptly named for such a business based city Chief Executive) and semi-appointed legislature. The irony of this is not lost on those pushing for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, and it is clear that the administration of Deng Xiaoping and his successors had learned considerably from this history of western colonialism (Ip, 2010). Border users often become tied up in a discourse on Chinese nationalism. From the perspective of my informants it is important to note that while scholars in both Beijing and the west may be discussing this point extensively, the attitude in the field was primarily pragmatic. In the same way that nineteenth century colonial powers provided a pragmatic equation of human and material resources with political power that enabled the expansion of imperial power by overcoming resource constraints, Beijings policy in Hong Kong has allowed it to leverage Hong Kongs global links, innovation and market capital against the vast supply of low cost and flexible labor across the border. Do immigration officers ever smile? An underlying current in the debate that surrounded globalisation in the late 21st century was whether the increase in global connections and networks had actually led to an easing of limitations on human movement across the globe, or had improved technology and expanded ability for states to track and control movement, leading to less democratic or egalitarian practices of global mobility. 3 It is important not to underestimate the role of central government policy (McKinsey Global Institute, 2009)

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border From one perspective the immigration and customs facility could be described as a equalizing experience. It is an experience many of us in advanced western economies are familiar with: we all have to line up and take our turn to be inspected. From the outside, appearance, age gender and wealth do not grant you exception to this ritual of submission to the state. Immigration and custom facilities (usually placed in the landscape of the airport in our increasingly global and mobile world) are often linked to significant experiences in our lives. They are sites of intense anxiety and intense relief depending on your relationship to and history with them. Most of us in western economies tend not to invest to much emotional capital in our travel documents until we lose them in an unfamiliar place. In the contested space of greater China, an idea that includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, documents of identity have additional significance (Wang, 2004). The vinyl covered booklets that we use today only became practical and common between the first and second world wars and are built on a system of bilateral relations (Slater, 2004). Travel documents have evolved with technology, from simple paper documents to the current biometric cards and booklets. The value of a travel document is its ability to be recognised and trusted by immigration officials. At the Hong Kong immigration checkpoint frequent travellers use smart ID cards and their fingerprint to enter and exit. At the same time businessmen from central Africa attempt to convince officials that there are millions of people who still have hand written passports from countries without the capital to invest in digital technology. Immigration and customs officers are the enforcers in the politics of global mobility. As individual agents they interpret the state (or jurisdictions) immigration rule and apply them to those seeking to cross the border. There are few times in modern society that we are required to submit ourselves for such thorough inspection than at the border. Border crossing offers travellers few protections and great risk. You are under intense observation. The Hong Kong-Shenzhen border is no exception, and cross border commuters take this risk as part of their daily lives. On numerous occasions during my fieldwork I was warned not only of the dangers of the other side, but the dangers of interacting at the border with the state itself4. This process of crossing the border can often leave you with the feeling of a seamless and scientific operation. It is however extremely subjective and fallible. I was once stoped exiting Hong Kong and taken aside, though fortunately not out of the main hall and had my passport whisked away for closer inspection. Minutes later it was returned with an apologetic smile. The officer on my way into Hong Kong the previous evening had mistyped the passport number on my crumpled and somewhat smelly passport so it hadnt matched. The whole fifteen minute episode left me with an unescapable feeling of being tracked. What does crossing the border say about you? You enter the border terminal though the ubiquitous sliding doors. Travelling up a elevator you enter the immigration hall. Brightly lit, often spacious but with a passive quietness, people line up in neat rows and the area is patrolled by uniformed guards (Hong Kong has outsourced this job to a 4 In this context particularly for the mainland Chinese state this has been a site of extrajudicial detention and denial of mobility on political grounds

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border private firm). Rows form behind counters with electronic signs dividing the room into somewhat arbitrary categories. These categories form a crude example of a greater process of inclusion and exclusion and the creating of the other that has at its core the interaction of the politics of mobility and identity. The categories you see in the immigration hall depending on which jurisdiction you are entering or exiting represent broad specific categories which the state you are trying to enter or exit has assigned you. Immigration officials face a conundrum: the less they inspect people the quicker their processing occurs and the faster the functions of global mobility and the attached economic benefit to the state can occur. At the same time the faster they go the greater the risk of letting an undesirable person through (Hayman 2004). At the mainland and Hong Kong counters a form of immigration triage occurs. The automatic electronic gates are reserved for those with permanent residence rights on each respective side while there are dedicated gates for children and the elderly. Shuffling up to the counter, the immigration officer from an elevated position performs a practiced glance, first at you then your passport, then back up to meet your eyes in a distrusting stare. This is what I think Orvar Lofgren meant when he coined the term nationalizing gaze. While Orvar primarily referred to this as the idea of extending the production of the nation beyond space and outwards into culture and in particular into mentalities (1999, p. 11), I take it to mean the way the nation gazes on each individual and in that gaze assesses the conformity of the person to a normative notion of what someone carrying those papers should be. I was lucky in my crossing; I was never properly asked why I was there or where I was going. I suspect I conformed to the notion of a long haired Australian backpacker. The one time I was called over for a random customs inspection the search stoped when my lonely planet guide book tumbled out of my bag. The way an individual is nationalised or given identity during the ritual of border crossing is different at the Mainland and Hong Kong ends of the crossing experience. Mainland China requires all but the citizens of a small number of neighbouring countries to apply for visas prior to getting to the checkpoint. Hong Kong on the other hand provides visas on arrival for citizens of a majority of countries, a key selling point for its role as Chinas showroom. Once you have approached the immigration counter the border is no longer egalitarian. The categories that permit entry are vast. The key categories, which side you are on (resident or visitor) are determined by a web of ancestry or conformity to a national entity for long enough to qualify for an institutional identity aside of that of your birth. The quirk that makes the politics of mobility so significant at this border is the plurality of identity border users have. Often individuals are required to submit different identity to each side, a symptom of the complex international forces that created Hong Kong. If you only have Hong Kong identity, you can get a Hong Kong permanent identity card (HKID) as well as an overseas Chinese card (OCC). These two documents allow you unlimited access across the border in both directions. There are also tens of thousands of Hong Kong permanent residents, some with Hong Kong passports who have another nationality. They use their Hong Kong ID card on the Hong Kong side and need the other passport and visa on the other side. Mainland Passport holders need an exit permit to use the land crossing (with some exceptions) and their passport or substitute documentation on the Hong Kong side. It gets confusing quickly, but the practice is that nationality Page 10 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border (or ethnicity) and Hong Kong identity is not connected, but mainland Chinese identity is fixed, symbolised by their refusal to allow second passports or large scale concept of permanent residency. This is a key way that Hong Kong people as Chinese with special characteristics challenge Beijings notion of sovereignty as they frequently have access to multiple passports5. The right to cross is linked not only to ancestry and conformity but also to power and economics. Until 2009 all travellers from Taiwan to Mainland China had to pass though a third port, usually Hong Kong, and use a special travel document (not their Taiwan Passport). The Taiwanese played a very significant role in developing the manufacturing sector in China, but at the same time they were also seen as a potential threat to the state. Accordingly their identity was laundered along with their money in Hong Kong. I asked the question whether increased cross border activity would have an ideological effect on the mainland, to the extent of residents demanding more freedoms and individual rights. My informants didnt think so, and pointed out that movement to and from other destinations would be far more significant in injecting new ideas. The actions of the state in revoking multiple entry visas (like the one I used) in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics is a sign that they do take mobility from outside their region as a threat. The Chinese Communist Partys sovereignty is built on what is known as the Beijing consensus, the idea that authoritarian governments can buy off the democratic wants of their populations through perpetual and even economic growth. In this circumstance what is the role of mobility in achieving this consensus? By managing the flow of ideas into china though censorship, migration controls and ghettoising alternative expressions to Hong Kong, they can present internally this consensus as a viable option. My informants accepted this notion but were clear in noting the need for the state to keep up its side of the bargain and that the border was in some way a protection for them from the consensuss failure. So what is Hong Kong? Hong Kong is a space of flow, a city built on movement blessed by geography, proximity and history (Sinn, 2009). Hong Kongs history is built on trade and transience. Over the centuries the modes of transport have changed but its role as a free port (with the exception of the period of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War) has remained the same. Elizabeth Sinn suggests that even in the 1850s Hong Kong played a critical role in facilitating the mobility of large number of Chinese to North America for the California Gold rush (2009, p. 19). What stands out in her description is that the same features that made Hong Kong so important then remain crucial today. These crucial elements include a reliable banking and financial system, a legal framework in which people feel confident they can receive appropriate and fair judgment, and regulations that protect both sides of business transactions. Modern Hong Kong since its colonial occupation has been a place of surprising diversity, within the context of a majority Chinese community. It is important not to gloss over the minority status of this diversity within Hong Kong, particularly as relations between the various ethnic groups that have come to inhabit the territory are not always harmonious. But when exploring Hong Kongs villages and large public housing developments away from the main tourist areas, it is not uncommon to see 5 These details were correct at the time I was in the field but are likely to have changed.

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border South Asian, Middle Eastern and Anglo faces engaged in intense Cantonese banter. This is a product of the British Empire that troubles the notions of nationality in Beijing, as many people of non-east Asian heritage have Hong Kong citizenship, carry only Hong Kong travel documents and can vote in Hong Kongs limited elections challenging popular notions of what it is to be Chinese. As well as being a challenge, the preservation of Hong Kong as an exception within the landscape of Chinese sovereignty can bring clear advantages. Hong Kong can be considered a Contact Zone or entry point for international ideas and capital while excluding those ideas from the Mainland. Along with issues such as a strong banking system and logistics it offers a comfortable place for foreign expatriates to live, in close proximity to their labor force but not actually with them (See (Yeoh & Willis, 2005) for an investigation of Contact Zones). While there are foreigners that commute across the border, it is important to note their movements are far more regulated than those with Hong Kong residency status. Those without Hong Kong Permanent Residency cannot use the electronic checkpoints and must have their passport stamped for every crossing. Most nationalities must have a visa to enter China from Hong Kong, and multiple entry visas are expensive and sometimes scarce in Hong Kong. As an informant, knowledgeable in mainland politics suggested to me, The (Beijing) government sees Hong Kong as a place to keep the foreigners happy and isolated from Mainland issues. In this vein I would suggest that Hong Kong as a SAR could be described as entirely borderland, without either a centre or a periphery. The strongest symbol of this is the Cityflyer airport bus service that crisscrosses the Island and New Territories day and night connecting most neighborhoods directly with the airport. Tim Cresswell in his analysis of mobility in the western world suggests that Airports provide an apt metaphor and symbol for the modern notion of mobility (2006, p. 220). I believe that Cresswells study of the Airport as nodes in the world system could be extrapolated to some degree to the space of Hong Kong. This concept is best displayed by the building in which I slept most of the nights I was in Hong Kong, Mirador Mansion and its more widely known sister building Chungking Mansions, one block down the road. These buildings represent the other end of the popular discourse of contemporary global mobility (See (Mathews, 2008) for a full description). An oversight in the buildings bylaws that did not define limits on what apartments could be used for has produced what can be either described as vertical slums or a site representing the miracle of global mobility and trade. Life in the Mansions, is dominated by traders from low income nations all over the world who come for an affordable base to buy low cost electronic goods to take back to their home countries to sell. It is a sight of the transience and that typically characterizes slums, not only because of the traders who operate a large and complex informal economy spanning the globe but also the refugees, failed business people and others seeking to escape or subvert family pressures, poverty and high rents in other parts of Hong Kong6. I often shared my hostel room with temporary workers, travelers and traveler traders from both mainland China and as far afield as Fiji. The Mansions are not home to the type of global citizens Hong Kongs leaders want but they are home to the type they need. Hong Kongs 6 It is also a popular place for western backpackers seeking a cheap place to stay, as well as hosting South Asian restaurants famous throughout Hong Kong

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border relaxed immigration controls and stable business environment make Mirador and Chungking Mansions possible, in the same way that the border and my informants who commuted across it enable and facilitate the global connections that make the Chinese economic miracle possible. If Hong Kong is defined as a space of flow can this description be extended across the border to Shenzhen? (Sinn, 2009). When I first visited Mainland China in 2004 I was amazed by its size and diversity, I described it to people outside as a country that deserves a planet. Although I would disagree with that statement now it is still worth raising. In the field this time I would say Hong Kong accurately self describes itself as Asias global city, and Shenzhen is Chinas National City, a place of unrivalled diversity of the peoples within China. Production How do they make things so cheaply in China? The relationship between space, border and production in Shenzhen is based on more than just low wages. In is based on the States deliberate creation of an environment in which two parallel worlds are permitted to operate simultaneously. Pearl River Delta workers produce goods in processes modelled on the small flexible workshops developed in the 60s and 70s in Hong Kong and still are widespread globally in the garment industry. In this process each action is in effect outsourced to an individual. The role of a manager is to collate these individual actions into final marketable goods. This is by definition ultimate capitalism in which the cost of each stitch can be traced. More significantly the cost of producing that stitch is non-variable and the responsibility of the individual that stitches it. This method of production shifts the labour costs risk of production to the individual worker. If a worker has a bad day and produces less, the cost is paid by them. The aim of this process is to maximise efficiency. It is a model used the world over, conventionally referred to as lean or just in time manufacturing. What makes the workshops of Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta different is the social and political framework in which this highly competitive model of production operates. The border signifies a significant difference in the resource constraints on production, significant enough that in less than a decade the vast majority of Hong Kongs manufacturing and back-office service industries have transferred across the border. My informant Blue suggested to me that the thing that was really different was the rules. This difference in rules extends throughout the production process. While its model of efficient production was pioneered in the tenement workshops of Hong Kong the existence and life of participants is vastly different across the border in Shenzhen and Dongguan. The manufacturing boom in the Shenzhen Guangdong corridor was born from the major policy shift in Beijing following Maos death, known as reforms and opening up (), a central part of which was the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) such as Shenzhen. Initially these were experiments by Beijing in how foreign direct investment would impact their sovereignty, and some have prospered more than others. Signifying the trial nature of this experiment with outside contact was the enforced (until the 1990s) Second Line, a second border between the Special Economic Zone and the rest of China. This was an actual border complete with fence, guards and checkpoints. People seeking to enter the SEZ needed to get a permit to enter and to stay more than Page 13 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border a few days. This border infrastructure still exists on the main road to Baoan, but is now primarily used for licence and identity checks. I was once on a public bus that was stopped at the checkpoint. The driver asked everyone without proper documents to go to the administration building nearby. The person I was travelling with had forgotten her ID so we simply got out and walked around the building and boarded another bus a little further down the road. Why another border within a country and this time without a history of division? Early in the communist governments history they enforced a Hukou () or household registration system (see (Lu, 2008). Initially as part of their program to root out class enemies (land owners, educated and wealthy individuals) the system was maintained as a way to control urban migration. At that time ones families pre-revolutionary economic class was a significant burden preventing work and educational opportunities. What remains of that process today is a system where every Chinese person carries an ID card with their photo, age, nationality (ethnicity) and place of residence. Your registered place of residence defines whether you are urban or rural and the county on your card is theoretically responsible for you. When you leave that county you are a tourist or a migrant. The place you are visiting is not responsible for providing your social welfare services. You are an internal migrant, and if you are born to migrant parents you are still a migrant and not automatically entitled to local services. Although these internal divisions are rapidly changing, the changes are being inconsistently applied across Mainland China. This social phenomenon of internal migration from central mainland China to the coast is a key symbol of how the rules differ at the border. Most of the factory workers that moved to Shenzhen in the later part of the 20th Century (millions of them) did so illegally. There was and is a system for legitimately employing someone from another part of the country and most professional workers are employed under legitimate schemes, but these usually require fees and social insurance contributions. Until gradual reforms in recent years most factory workers simply made up an ID number and bosses looked the other way. So Shenzhen was and still is a migrant city predominantly built by migrants who on paper didnt exist. This is the reason population figures are usually given as a range, the lower being the number of official residents, the higher the best guess of the actual number of residents. Lack of legal status denies certain protections to workers who were at the mercy of unscrupulous factory owners and police. It is significant to note that most of the labour that contributed to Hong Kongs economic growth was illegal migrants or refugees from mainland Chinas internal turmoil. What differs today is that many of this latest group of migrants to the SEZ return home after only a few years in Shenzhen, to start up new businesses and both create and benefit from increased economic development away from the coast. Dagongmei () is the term given to the majority of these migrants (See (Chang, 2008; Ngai, 2005) for excellent accounts of this group), many of whom are young rural women, unmarried and seeking opportunities to escape the farm and patriarchal rural society. The wage gap between rural inland China and Shenzhen was until recently so great that one daughter working in Shenzhen could support a whole rural family. Boys were usually required to stay home and help look after the farm. Rural families have an exemption to the one child policy, and often dont have the money to send more than one child to secondary school. Moving to a SEZ on the coast has become an opportunity to escape family pressures, and as Chang notes (and as many conversation I had in Shenzhen Page 14 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border confirmed) the emancipating nature of migration from Chinas inland to the coast should be considered as important as its financial incentive (2008). This massive migration has had major social impacts on Shenzhen. The population is both youthful and emancipated while maintaining strong ties to their homelands, symbolised by the massive scale of the annual rush home for the spring festival. One significant difference between this rural urban migration and those in other developing counties relates to the relationship of these migrant workers to their factories. The nature of migrant life in Shenzhen is different because the rules are different. One legacy of the planned economy and the cradle to grave iron rice bowl communist work unit is that factories usually provide accommodation and meals for their workers, both making it reasonably safe for single females to move to Shenzhen, but also separating the factory workers from the local community and creating an independent and separate worker identity. The manufacturing cities that have sprouted in China after the opening up, with their walled factories and dirt streets have created unique and often surreal urban spaces. During the day the streets are empty, or filed with trucks and men. After dark when the factories shut workers come out onto the streets for a few hours to eat street food, and socialise before returning to their factories before curfew. Both Leislie T. Chang in her volume Factory Girls and Pun Ngai in her work Made in China (2008 & 2005) stress that these factory towns are sites of massive social agency and change, challenging patriarchal cultural norms while also being sites of exploitation. I visited two factories and spoke to a small number of factory workers, as well as inspectors and quality control experts. My experience supports Chang and Ngais observations and analysis. It is this history of going out that has left a mark on the culture of Shenzhen as a site of endless possibility and change. The cost and bureaucratic barriers preventing mainland Chinese (especially internal migrants) from crossing into Hong Kong means that their world stops at the border fence, and it is left to cross-border managers and traders to realise the true economic value of their labour. Is this flexible accumulation or something else? Flexible accumulation rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is categorised by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financial service, new markets, and above all, greatly intensified rates of commercial technological and organisational innovation further it has entrained vast shifts in the uneven patterning of development according to David Harvey (1989, p. 147). Another symptom is time space compression or the shrinking of communication and transport times that occurred in the late 20th century (Harvey, 1989). In talking about flexible accumulation Harvey is trying to label the shift in the 1970s from Fordism (in which a worker is possessed by the employer and managed scientifically) to a system where the worker gains autonomy but also acquires greater risk, such as that taken on by piece workers in a Hong Kong garment production process. Although it appears as if the economic reforms and establishment of the SEZs occurred overnight changing workers relationship to the production process, it is clear that life in a Shenzhen factory is far from a site of emancipation for individual workers within the production process. As Ong & Nonini explain, the changes in Asia from the 1970s onwards created new kinds of social Page 15 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border organisations that require intercultural communication and are de-territorialised, flexible and highly mobile (Ong & Nonini, 1997, p. 10). Young factory workers are not members of this type of social organisation, but those who manage and employ them are. While targets and quotas are a feature of every factory workers life, the relationship of the worker to the factory is more along the lines of Fordism than to the idea of a work force of individual independent workers. Shenzhens young factory workers labour, eat and sleep in time to the production process under the watchful eye of their managers, a hangover from the work unit model of the Communist economy and one that is slowly dissolving as the space beyond the factories modernises and develops. The second and often under examined dimension in the cross-border production model is the role of petty capitalists who in used local social networks to facilitate a production system in an environment conspicuously lacking state regulation (Smart, 1999). A number of the border users I described in Part One could be described as petty capitalists, facilitating production based on personal networks in an environment with limited regulation (See (Smart & Smart, 1998). While the heady initial years of SEZ have faded away as the state has developed the skills to enforce its sovereignty over flexible capital, the legacy of these capitalist pioneers still holds sway for many looking to get rich quick. These pioneers and there modern day decedents are what I call Capitals foot soldiers diligently negotiating the borders that has enabled this model of low cost production. Who benefits from the border? Borders generate distinctive landscapes of connection, possibility and risk (Smart & Smart, 2008). Cross border trade is built on the possibilities for added value created by a border between two unequal territories (Heyman, 2007). Comparative advantage is the economic term that describes how global trade benefits both sides by allowing for the maximum exploitation of their resources. In the case of the Pearl River Delta, it is the low cost land, flexible labour and lax regulatory environment of mainland China, together with the financial institutions, reliable political regulation (taxes and courts) and most importantly the global market links of Hong Kong and its residents that have facilitated this advantage. In crudest terms the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Border is a barrier marking the transaction of flexible and low cost labour in post socialist China with the capital that the rest of the world provides in exchange for low cost goods. This difference is a combination of resource constraints and regulatory pressures. It is important to note the resource constraints (or lack of them) and the role of the state and regulation (or lack of it) in this comparative advantage. The role of the Chinese state in economic life is after forty years of reform is still significant, with private enterprise in many industries severely restricted. As my informants suggested the rules are different across the border and this difference and the relationship between business owners and state officials is usually symbiotic, with the former always sensitive to the will of the latter. There is also a third dimension, the flow of raw materials into the region from across the globe (including from Australia), the organization of which interestingly is still very much state dominated. Many of my informants took advantage of the competing economic landscapes to act as intermediaries, exporters and mangers. They spoke about the role of Hong Kong as providing a Page 16 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border stable "shop front" for their business operations. They also reiterated concerns around issues of corruption and bureaucratic uncertainty present in Mainland Chinese business culture, suggesting that the challenges to egalitarian capital accumulation remain in the region. They noted how the further away you get from Hong Kong the more wining and dining you have to do", they acknowledged to the definite advantages for businesses of working in an environment hostile to any form of effective workers associations or unions, even while the Chinese state seeks to strike a complicated bargain recognising the need to keep workers satisfied. The answer to the question of who benefits from the border is subjective: the time space compression that has accompanied the massive economic changes in the late 20th century has its own power geometry and the changes did not affect regions, workers or capitalists equally (Ong & Nonini, 1997, p. 10). The border is selective in who can benefit from crossing it. Its value depends on whether you see it as a site of resistance or of protection. In one way, the real value of the border and the rapid economic changes it has enabled accrues to the western consumer who has benefited from decades of low cost production. The real losers have been those negatively affected by the externalities of manufacturing that has occurred unregulated and isolated across the border. Capitals foot soldiers I want 10,000 mp3 players, who do I ask? My original intention with this project was to investigate the lives of those who frequently used or commuted across the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border (my definition of frequent being 3 or more times per week). What became clear the more I participated in the border experience was that the border was selective in one direction and relatively open in the other. Hong Kong people had almost unlimited access to China and Shenzhen people had limited access to Hong Kong, though this access was improving every month. When I asked cross border commuters what they did, inevitably it was linked to the global production cycle that has produced so much of the recent economic growth in China, whether through facilitating trade or selling to the still developing Chinese market. The thing I didnt expect and that has changed my perspective was that much of the commuting was driven by complex social factors that influenced people to choose to live in Hong Kong and commute across the border to Shenzhen well beyond purely financial reasons.7 This surprised me. I had imagined that there would have been a huge push to escape the high rents of Hong Kong to the larger more affordable apartments across the small muddy river that separates the two cities. While there has been some movement of Hong Kong residents across the border (See (Breitung, April 2003) (Breitung, 2002) & (Lin & Tse, 2005)), what I heard was also loaded discourses of place and identity that went beyond purely economic factors. The Hong Kong Shenzhen border signals both a value step and a change in rules. There is also a seldom articulated element of class and othering linked to status as a Hong Kong person. The Hong Kong state-assigned identity

7 There is possibly some bias in this claim, due to my own language restrictions and my limited number of informant. For discussions of Hong Kong people living in Shenzhen (See (Breitung, 2002) (Lin & Tse, 2005) (Chiu & Ho, 2005) (Shen, 2003) & (Breitung, April 2003))

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border bestows certain legal, economic and social privileges to individuals and their families that are denied to Shenzhen people (See (Siu, 2009). When I asked people why they chose to live in Hong Kong, when it would be more economical and practical to live in Shenzhen, there wasnt a consistent answer, but there was a clear discourse running through our conversations that Hong Kong was safer, more suitable for children with a better lifestyle. The underlying motif was that the rules were better, particularly in regards to socio-political regulation, including, rule of law, quality and status of education, effective state welfare and healthcare. Cross border commuters as traders and managers capitalise on this as negotiators between the global (nominally the western consumer) and the local (the Mainland factory and its workers). Their status as Hong Kong people allows them access to both global markets (Hong Kong passport holders do not require visas for most western countries) and local practices through shared language and understanding of local norms and practices. In this discussion it is important to differentiate between flows of extra-territorial capital through international banks, transnational organisations and government agencies analysed constantly by macro economists and the people I followed and have named capitals foot soldiers. It is them that link the capital that arrives in Hong Kong with the labour across the border using their mobility privileges and social capital as Hong Kong residents to facilitate the low cost production process, often physically moving the cash across the border on their person. They allow the supply chain to exist, agilely subverting and managing the constraints of the state at the frontier. These cross border managers and traders rely heavily on their personal histories that bridge the border. This transnational ethnic social capital (Chen, 2000) can be both inherited through intergenerational links (particularly to ancestral villages and their historical religious practices) or manufactured through contemporary learned links formed from short term shared experiences such as attending the same university or a mutual understanding of golf. I observed two key generators of this type of capital during my field work. The first was historical links across the border created by the constant migration to Hong Kong from the Mainland. The second was a chronic shortage of university places in Hong Kong around the 1970s that caused a number of my informants to study at mainland Chinese institutions. As Xiangming Chen eloquently puts it, these networks can act as both glue and lubricant in the production process (2000, p. 671). Gluing relates to providing the trust needed to create deals in an environment of limited regulation and legal protection, lubricant to the way ethnic social capital can smooth out discrepancies in expectations and standards across the border. These networks of social and often economic capital spread outside the region, and were particularly importantly during the initial development phase in providing markets for the regions goods. It is important to stress that these petty capitalists with their ethnic networks are dependent on fixed state actors in underwriting their activities (Smart, 1999). The state acts in both a facilitator role providing land and other resource, as well as in an exploitative role, collecting bribes, rents, taxes and duties. Cross border traders, entrepreneurs and mangers manage the state using their social capital. Whether or not this can be analysed as their subverting state power is questionable, particularly since with the collapse of a central ideology and lack of local government accountability Page 18 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border it is most likely the official who in creating the rules is also subverting them. Part of this is the role of Hong Kong as a safe haven from both the whims of corrupt Chinese officials and the mitigating of liability and risk for entrepreneurs. A good example of this occurred during the global down turn in 2008, when there were numerous reports of factory owners abandoning struggling factories in China for Hong Kong and Taiwan. The active role of these border crossers means their agency consists in leveraging their history, skills and status to personal advantage. Notions of identity are critical to this but pragmatism reigns (Smart & Smart, 1998). The flexible use of identity as social capital I observed suggests that the one country two systems ideology initially by two remote centres of power has been transformed and operationalised by subjects in the region for personal gain. The border bestows power on those who can cross it. As the border softens and becomes more permeable these cultural skills will become more critical, replacing current political enforcement of economic roles. To answer the question as to where you can get 10,000 mp3 players, that place is Huaqiangbei ( ), the electronics market in Shenzhen, a couple of subway stops from the border. It is a market of shop fronts representing factories across the Pearl River Delta. Traders from across the globe come here to find suppliers for electrical goods (there is an equivalent fashion market across the street), and these vendors will deliver your 10,000 mp3 players to the border. You must then get them across. Consumption Why do I do my shopping in Shenzhen? The Hong Kong Shenzhen border represents a semi-permeable barrier that enables a value step to exist between two different but rapidly converging zones (Heyman, 2007). There has always been trade across the border even during the height of the revolutionary era. Unlike the global local production process I previously described, which is dependent on networks and relationships, cross border consumption is an individual action, an action in the Hong Kong-Shenzhen context dependent on ones individual relationship with the state. Until 2003 and the introduction of the individual visitors scheme for Mainland residents, cross border consumption was almost exclusively the domain of those with Hong Kong status. The way Hong Kong people consume Shenzhen is different from the way Shenzhen (and Mainland) people consume Hong Kong. The relationship between consumption and identity is visceral on both sides of the border. There is a running joke that Hong Kongs number one hobby is shopping. To an outsider, downtown Shenzhen would appear to be a series of garish shopping malls connected by subway lines. It is important not to underestimate the role of class and socio-economic status in discussions about consumption. Income inequality is high in China, and when this is combined with high levels of aspiration can lead to interesting practices of consumption. What makes cross border consumption interesting is the way the border and the associated value step can manipulate class location. For example a labourer in Hong Kong can consume as a middle class person in Shenzhen even as a Shenzhen office worker struggles to afford a basic meal in Hong Kong. Another thing to consider when thinking about cross border consumption is the financial cost of crossing the border. While there is no toll to cross the border the exclusion zone on the Hong Page 19 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border Kong side means you are obliged to use some form of public transport on the Hong Kong side. The cheapest trip is around HK$25 one way, which would buy you breakfast in Hong Kong. At the time of my fieldwork it was also a little over a days wage for a Dagongmei factory worker. In addition to the consumption of nightlife (described in Part One) Hong Kong people, particularly those living close to the border, engage in what was described to me in conversation as survival shopping. Housewives from the new territories of Hong Kong travel across the border to purchase groceries and other household items at a lower cost. The same practice applies to travelling to Shenzhen to purchase low cost (usually pirated) books, DVDs and other goods. Hong Kongs status as a duty free zone, compared to mainland Chinas rather aggressive import tariff regime means luxury goods cost less Dollar for Yuen in Hong Kong. With status and value firmly attached to brands and their authenticity amongst Chinas growing middle class, Hong Kongs lower prices and better enforcement of luxury product standards and intellectual property make Hong Kong a popular shopping destination for Mainland consumers. It is not uncommon to see shoppers from mainland China with lists of requests for friends and family and mandarin language skills are becoming essential for employment as a shop assistant. While Hong Kong imports the majority of its food it does not necessarily import from China, so your steak will likely come from Queensland and your potatoes from Europe. Because of mainland Chinas poor record with food safety infant formula manufactured overseas is a popular purchase for cross border shoppers. When does it make sense to live across the border? On paper living in Shenzhen, particularly in the new neighbourhoods directly adjacent the border and commuting to work in Hong Kong seems like a good idea, and thousands of people do it (Chiu & Ho, 2005). The purchasing power of your Hong Kong salary is greater. When I went to Hong Kong, I expected to find plenty of people enjoying the value step, but I also found that there was a lot more forces tied up in the decision to live across the border than purely cost. There was also a trend of people moving to Hong Kong to commute to Shenzhen. Relocation decisions despite the linguistic and supposed cultural consistencies across the border are complex (See (Chiu & Ho, 2005) detailed statistical analysis). Choosing to migrate from Hong Kong to Shenzhen from my observations is discussed more in terms of lifestyle and quality than cost. As one of my informants put it, you live in Shenzhen until you can afford to live in Hong Kong. This alternate and inverse value step is symbolised by the thousands of school students crossing into Hong Kong each morning for school. As seen in the profiles in part one, family links play a critical role in choosing which side of the border to live on. One interesting phenomena that I was unable to properly investigate during my field work was the trend for elderly Hong Kong people to retire across the border, particularly after 1997 when they were able to continue receiving their pension outside Hong Kong (Lin & Tse, 2005, p. 887). This change coinciding with the handover of Hong Kong allows elderly people who struggle with Hong Kongs high living costs and who often have social links that predate the enforcement of the border to take advantage of the value step while still living relatively close to their children in Hong Kong (Chou, 2007).

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border I can do things on the other side that I could never do here? Cross border consumption is a site where the economic and psychological impacts of crossing the border can come together. The value step enables people crossing the border to change social standing and an apparently higher class. It is interesting to note that most of the homes purchased by Hong Kong people in China are second or holiday homes (Shen, 2003). Hong Kong based property groups have created gated estates in Shenzhen as a way for Hong Kong people to express their wealth, and notions of property values are something that will play a critical role in further integration of the cities (Smart & Lin, 2004). The act of crossing the border has an affective effect on some individuals, emotionally separating them from inhibitions and social responsibilities. In some circles of Hong Kong, Shenzhen takes on a Las Vegas allure. One interesting outcome of this in addition to the drugs and prostitution discussed in Part One is the phenomenon of tai tais or second wives. Women, usually former Dagongmei workers, may be kept as mistresses (provided with a house and allowance) and visited during business trips across the border (Wu, 2003). The value step was so great that it allowed Hong Kong truck drivers to keep mistresses in Shenzhen, destabilizing practices of class, gender, sex and citizenship, and even more interesting bearing in mind polygamy was legal in Hong Kong up to the 1970s (See (Wu, 2003; Yang, 2006, pp. 113-135). The notion of the border as a site of transgression is popular in many regions and discourses, particularly for the well studied US-Mexico border. While this discourse of transgression and transgressor in some sectors of Hong Kong involves othering and discriminatory practices, the rapid economic changes on the Mainland are fast eroding the value step and redrawing these equations. For example the economic crisis of 2008 left rumours of entire buildings of abandoned second wives, and as the growing Mainland middle class become increasingly globally aware, Hong Kong is becoming a site of transgression and consumption against censorship and restrictions on mainland China. Difference

Space is the general idea people have of where things should be in physical and cultural relation to each other. In this sense, space is the conceptualisation of the imagined physical relationship which give meaning to society. Place, on the other hand, is the distinct space where people live; it encompasses both the idea and the actuality of where things are (Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Keith and Pile 1993; Hastings and Olwif 1997 in (Donnan & Wilson, 1999, p. 9). City of Exacerbated difference Dong Guan is the spiralling industrial heartland of the Pearl River Delta to the north of Shenzhen in which most of the worlds electronic goods are produced. During my field work I tried to picture in my head what people there imagined when they looked from Shenzhen across border onto the misty mountains that mark the exclusion zone of parklands making that make the border appear so incongruous with skyscrapers built up to the fence on the Shenzhen side. One evening I had a conversation over dinner in Baoan (an industrial district to the north of Shenzhen) with a chauffeur driver and his wife who assembled electronic goods (both migrants from central China). During dinner they asked through a mutual friend (they didnt speak English), what I Page 21 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border was doing tomorrow. I said I was going to interview someone in Hong Kong. My answer unfurled in them dreamy plans of the future when they would have saved up enough money to visit just for a few days. I couldnt explain to them that I intended to be there in time for my interview in the afternoon and be back for dinner. Such is the complex nature of difference here that this couple who owned their modest apartment, and had offered me their spare bed if I was unable to find a bus back to the city conceived Hong Kong as an exotic and elusive destination. Taking a taxi back though the humid night air on the expansive modern freeway I thought of how their lives were so different to that of their parents, and the cost and sacrifices they had occurred to make this happen. Their only child was thousands of miles away with their parents because they both had to work to afford their new life. Here was Hong Kong as an exotic vacation spot, less than a hundred kilometres away but completely out of reach. I hope this is one element of what Rem Koolhaus, in his introduction to his study of the Pearl River Delta, meant when he classified the region as the city of exacerbated difference (Koolhaas, 2001, p. 29). A city built and so dependent on contrast that it is based on the greatest possible difference between its parts complementary or competitive (Koolhaas, 2001, p. 29). This is one of the few texts I could find that highlighted the intense difference in physical structure and its inhabitants senses and sensibilities across the border. The difference in physical landscapes, so effectively captured by this term, has an ephemeral and phenomenological effect on the border traveller. On the Shenzhen side of the border neighbourhoods are build right up to the fence. Some specifically cater for visitors walking across from Hong Kong or commuting back to Hong Kong in the other direction, but by and large they are ordinary residential neighbourhoods, who can often view the mountains of Hong Kong from their windows. It is not only because you cross the border that influences to what extent you physically experience the border but also how you cross that dictates both your exposure to the difference generated by the symbiotic systems that the border enforces. How does the act of crossing effect you? How do we feel the border? I have discussed previously the role of border crossings as important symbols and sites of change. It is not insignificant that border checkpoints and airports have the same architecture. Both are sites of change in that they are key physical places in the conceptual spaces of our lives. The Hong KongShenzhen border region is full of these types of places that stay with the traveller long after they leave the region. There are four main border crossings used by individual commuters and visitors between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. There are others but they are primarily for goods and vehicles and not available to pedestrians. The mode for crossing the border is by public transport or foot because private modes are prohibitively expensive8. Each crossing gives its users a slightly different experience. The oldest most historically loaded of these is the LoWu () checkpoint. It was and still is the crossing point for the Kowloon Canton (Guangzhou Railway). Symbolically this checkpoint takes passengers from or 8 Only cars and drivers registered and licensed on both sides can drive across, and even then they are only accredited for a single crossing point.

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border though the outer working class neighbourhoods of Hong Kongs new territories and deposits them in a giant complex of shopping centres. Not the glitzy American style malls that start one subway station inland but Chinese- style shopping centres full of narrow passageways and small booths selling clothes and other low cost manufactured goods (usually counterfeit) as well as massage, cheap pharmaceuticals, dental and other medical services that take advantage of the value step. Juxtaposing this at the end of the plaza is the Shenzhen Four Seasons. This plaza appears as a client landscape for Hong Kong people to exploit (to use colonial imagery). It is seen from Hong Kong as a sight of transgression, notorious for pick pockets and the petty crimes. Heading in the opposite direction for those leaving Shenzhen for Hong Kong, you enter the checkpoint through a maze of crowded, faded booths and emerge from immigration control in Hong Kong to a Starbucks and a large stack of newspapers not permitted to be sold on the Mainland. It can be seen as a ritual of transformation from the chaos of the hording masses to the civility of Hong Kong, as one American expatriate casually put it. Compare this to the other checkpoint that connects both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Metros. Lok Ma Chau spur line and checkpoint is relatively new, opened in 2007 and built in the glass and gloss white postmodern style typical of airports. The view from your MTR train as you ride high over the jungle of the exclusion zone is drastic, with rice paddies and village homes met by a marshy river, razor wire fence then immediately a skyline of massive high rise apartment blocks. As you exit the checkpoint complex on the Shenzhen side you do so onto a clean street lined with real estate agents and a KFC. Reminding you that you have changed places are the street food vendors and old ladies touting prostitutes. The surrounding neighbourhood is aimed at cross border commuters, with tailored housing shops and entertainment: as much as the state and its local agencies have tried to plan out difference the touts and street food vendors (who are desired by residents) disrupt their work. Crossing via Honggang Port () presents China as a work in progress. It is the only twentyfour hour checkpoint and the primary crossing for cross border coach services. The buildings on both sides have an aura of temporariness with the booths for the Chinese immigration officers still framed in wood. The checkpoint only began operating twenty-four hours a day in 2003 after much debate and can be viewed as a symbol of integration (See (Smart & Lin, 2004). But it is a sign of an integration that is still in progress. One evening I decided to walk to my destination a few blocks inland and ended up walking though dusty ditches then on the edge of an expressway on a ramp surrounded by construction sites. Boarding the bus in Wan Chai in the glitzy hart of Hong Kong Island greeted me on this walk with the sight of construction workers sleeping rough amid the constant construction dust. For a cross border commuter this is a powerful visual and olfactory ritual of border transformation. This crossing is popular with commuters because of its operating hours and the buses are lower cost and more comfortable than the metro. The other cross border bus route is through the Shenzhen Bay Bridge described in the opening profile in Part One. The experience of this crossing seems hypermodern until you leave the bus terminal on the Mainland and enter a dusty chaotic factory and construction zone still catching up. Intra urban border crossings represent the ultimate example of time-space compression discussed in notions of flexible accumulation and globalisation in the 21st century. They force individuals to change place quickly compared to other discussions of trans-jurisdictional change that require long air and sea routes. Border commuters dont have time to process the change in landscape. Many Page 23 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border cross it so frequently they become conditioned to the changes. The same happened to me, when I took a phone call and set an appointment without asking which side the caller was on. When I questioned my informants about this at first most insisted the emotional and psychological impacts were mundane and insignificant, but the more they talked and reflected on it the more obvious the act of crossing affected the way they felt and behaved. Metaphors like putting your guard up or down, or the smell or the language of the conversations in the background were used. I can acutely sympathise with all these feelings, which affected me too as I used the border. The experience, ritual and symbolism of crossing the border are not confined to the checkpoint. In addition to the landscape of the Hong Kong exclusion zone with Shenzhens skyline running up against the fence two other examples of the way borders permeate the landscape of the Pearl River Delta are pertinent. One is the village within the city and the other the factory compound. The village within the city reflects the way land was allocated and developed by the state at the beginning of the SEZ (See (Ratti, 2003; Yushi, 2006; Hao, Hooimeijer, Sliuzas, & Geertman, 2009). Local villagers took ownership of their land at the creation of the SEZ, leasing or selling their fields to factories or developers, while modifying their village homes to provide low cost housing for the waves of newly arrived migrants. Gradually these villages got bigger. Some buildings became small apartment blocks. These patches of small apartment blocks were surrounded by factories and high high-rise buildings and maintained their village feel at street level in contrast to the surrounding postmodern industrialisation. Known as Hand Shake buildings because they were built so close together that you could shake hands through the window, they provided an essential pool of low cost housing for migrant labour. Now totally hemmed in and slowly disappearing, they serve to isolate and symbolise the growth of class distinctions in the city. As stock of informal but essential low cost housing, you could compare them to the Chungking and Miridor Mansions where I stayed or the tenement slums of Hong Kong that were reclaimed towards the end of the last century. The life of a factory worker is also spatially confined by the walls of the factory compound. The Pearl River Delta is dotted with large factory complexes often housing thousands of workers. These compounds function as independent towns providing accommodation, food and entertainment for their young workers who only leave the compound on their rare days off or late in the evenings after work. This model of self contained production has a history in the Chinese work unit, but leaves a profound mark on the cultural and social life of the worker, creating zones of inclusion and exclusion and setting up barriers to the establishment of non-work social networks and relationships. Shenzhen is a linear city built along central boulevards and expressways, a method of planning in which urban designers and infrastructure play catch up with self realising zones of development (Mihai, 2001). Whether the stringing out of the city was deliberate or unintentional it has the effect of disjointing social networks across the urban region. Commuting within Shenzhen is limited and challenging as infrastructure has failed to keep pace with the citys growth. It is often easier to get to Hong Kong Island than to other parts of Shenzhen as the city runs east to west making travel along its length difficult. The spaces we live in are made of places. Border commuters and residents of the Pearl River Delta find boundaries and walls make up important parts of their personal space. For border users the psychological and phenomenological impact of both Shenzhens urban landscape and border crossings is significant. How significant it is hard to categorise and as the landscape of Shenzhen itself is constantly on the move this question deserves and requires a more in-depth longitudinal study. Page 24 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border Identity Shouldnt your identity be the one that is most useful to you? Borders may serve as useful metaphors for understanding the rootlessness of many populations today, but this should not obscure the fact that everyone lives within or between the boundaries of nation states, and these boundaries are always more than metaphorical (Donnan & Wilson, 1999, p. 10). I entered the Hong Kong borderland with few preconceptions, other than that frequent border crossers (border commuters) would represent a unique community to which people would self identify and produce a particular outlook amidst their unifying experience. After three months travelling backwards and forwards across the border talking with border users of all types, it was clear that such a community didnt exist. Instead I discovered that an idealised transient identity, the one associated with rock stars and multiple houses on multiple continents, is not good for your mental health. Each of the border commuters I spoke too defined some place as home. My informant Green, educated in the United Kingdom working and living during the week in Hong Kong and relaxing on the weekend in Shenzhen, still made it back to his family home north of Shenzhen each Sunday afternoon for a meal. This is comparable with my experiences of and reading about the San Diego (USA) Tijuana (Mexico) border in which the time space compression action of the intra-urban border and the gaze of the state creates a need for frequent border users to pick a defined identity, even if they do so multiple times during their lifecycle in a pragmatic way. It is not that ones home in the long term is geographically fixed. Rather migration assimilation and nationalisation though long term conformity mean that a border commuters home may shift locations multiple times. At any given point an identification is chosen and designated in the crossers mind. This home may be abstract, an ancestral village high in the mountains of central China which is visited every couple of years to clean the graves of the ancestors. Home may be inaccessible like that of a refugee Iranian trader in the Chungking mansions. Home may hold memories of suffering and bitterness for young factory workers escaping rigid village life. But it is the answer you give instinctively when someone asks where are you from? The identity that you perform as a border user is the product of a number of processes: of how the state assigns status though passports, ID cards and visas and your relationship to economic production and the global supply chain supported by how we have been able to define ourselves through consumption. There is also an undeniable element of emotion and attachment to identity that is much like the notion of home. We can also lose track of our identities and crossing the border frequently challenges it as it did for me during my fieldwork. Younger people living trans-border lives involving multiple borders, particularly those who had studied outside the region, have a working concept of a more cosmopolitan and unfixed idea of home and identity. But for those who had lived their whole lives in the region the concept of being without a historical connection to place challenges the clear notion of place that they had established to un-complicate their daily interaction with the border. Identity is significant but it is made up of many elements, some fixed, and others flexible. Borderlands allow identity to be Page 25 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border manipulated, but ultimately it is also about survival. As outside observers away from the borderland we can take issues of identity far too seriously. Conclusion Space and place in flux? The reason the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong Island to Guangzhou is so fascinating is that it is a space and place of change. Road maps go out of date each month; buildings only ten years old are replaced. Construction sites are a permanent feature. Shenzhen is a migrant metropolis between the two historical trading centres of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. There has always been cross border trade and there has always border crossing and there has always been interdependence. What has changed is the nature of the experience, usually instigated by changes far away. So far in this thesis we have conceptualised borders, defining each side through the low cost manufacturing phenomenon that has given the region global prominence, as well as the more local and individual phenomenon of consumption across a border within a city. Finally we looked at borders as a site of extreme difference that can be read into the place or landscape of the borderland. As Rem Koolhaas terms it this border has produced a city of exacerbated difference (Koolhaas, 2001, p. 29). Border crossing is an emotional and phenomenological act for the individual, but it is also one that you can become accustomed to. Underlying all these paradigms is a question of identity formation. Transnational notions of identity are usually discussed in relation to permanent migrants in host countries. The frequent cross border traveller inhabiting the Hong Kong-Shenzhen space have notions and experience of difference compressed in terms of changing place without the need to take time to cross oceans. I entered the field expecting to find a clear articulation of a cross border identity, ideally with some form of creative or social product. Instead I discovered masses of cross border networks of social capital, maintained through historical and ancestral links, trade, production and consumption. These networks do not appear to have created a clear distinct cross border identity (although I admit the limitations of my fieldwork). This is not to say that such an identity is not fast approaching, as the economic value step between Hong Kong and Shenzhen dissolves due to Chinas rapid economic growth. However there are clear limitations imposed on the creation of such an identity. These limitations are the same elements I have explored throughout this reflection. They include the Chinese states desire to monopolise identity for its own aims, the complex histories of separate development, a production process dependent on the separation of labour from capital maintained by a generation of elites that have profited personally from cross border production and consumption, and an architectural legacy that promotes and places difference. I would like to conclude with an assertion that Hong Kong and Shenzhen (and the Pearl River Delta region) as well as being a space of great difference and advantage is also a phenomenal site of change. While histories and narratives of difference remain in residents living memory, generational change, economic development and a passion for pragmatism are rapidly dissolving both the difference and advantage necessary for the border to exist. While it has clearly yet to become a dominant and popular discourse, if the history of change in this trans-border region is anything to go by, the region will fade as the economic miracle spreads the Page 26 of 67 Line in the sand - Part 2 - Reflecting on the Border Experience Jonathan Burrow

Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border phenomenal pace of social change across mainland China. Nevertheless, this change will not mean the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border region will not remain a fascinating and essential site for anthropological study well into the future.

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Line in the Sand: Experiences of mobility at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Border

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