The report said the mechanism will specifically target sanfei foreigners, or “three illegals”, referring to three groups of foreigners who illegally enter, stay or work in China. The three cities will standardize visa application procedures and jointly carry out enforcement against the groups, it added. Details of the mechanism, however, were not disclosed in the report.

The campaign to weed out sanfei foreigners is not a novelty in China. It first caught national attention in Beijing in 2012 when the capital police force announced a massive clean-up of the “three illegals” after a video surfaced showing a British man being beaten up by several Chinese for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in public in Beijing.

The campaign, however, could turn into a fiasco indulging xenophobia and nationalism that fuels more rants by CCTV Dialogue host Yang Rui.

According to Chinese law, foreigners who enter China or remain in China illegally could be detained, monitored or deported by any police bureau at or above the county level. A foreigner who illegally enters China could also face a fine between RMB1,000 ($164) and RMB10,000 ($1,640).

Home page photo credit: Caixin 

One insider with connections to the sex trade said at least 200,000 jobs would be affected by the government clampdown. This includes not only the obvious sex workers, intermediaries and “masseurs”, but also those industries that grow because of the trade: taxi drivers, hotel owners, restaurateurs and grocery owners, Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao reported on February 12.

At least 70% of the city’s taxi drivers are making a living from late night Johns, fresh from their “rendezvous,” Lao Wang, a local taxi driver, told the newspaper. A taxi driver can receive up to several hundred yuan in kickbacks by driving a John to a designated hotel or club. Now the midnight cab rides, and resulting kickbacks, are gone and drivers have to endure a long, slow night. “The night is almost through, I haven’t even had one customer,” one driver said.

Given the sensitive times, the cancellation of hotel reservations unsurprisingly spiked.

A Xiaoshang, a Dongguan street where throngs of xiaojie (a euphemism for a sex worker) used to congregate, is now an echoey shadow of itself. Grocery shop owners reminisce about the good old days when the xiaojies busily purchased products necessary for their trade.

Home page photo credit: Wen Wei Po 

Police enter the hotel

You can see footage of the arrest here and below. The police clearly wanted the sting filmed.

The raid, which took place shortly before midnight near Futian checkpoint, involved over 10 police vans. The suspects are still being held for questioning.

This follows a crackdown on organized crime in Guangdong Province which took place last year. The China Daily reported:

Police detained 529 suspects as part of a crackdown on 311 unsolved cross-border organized crime matters during a campaign between July 9 and Aug 8, according to Guo Shaobo, deputy director-general of Guangdong provincial department of public security.

In 2011, U.K.-born former Royal Marine Chris Thrall told his story of working as a doorman for a Hong Kong criminal organization from the mid-1990s.

Police have gathered up the highly-organised group of criminals after coming across their operation and discovering fake cash worth 210 million yuan (US$33.69 million). It’s possible the group produced more, with much of it already in the system.

In total, 37 people were arrested in the raids, with two rings smashed in the process.

Here’s more from Shanghaiist:

Following several successes last year, at the end of January the Guangdong police mounted a series of co-ordinated early-morning raids in several places across the province.

In the town of Jieyang they found the main printing plant, hidden within a private furniture factory.

Guangdong is not just the manufacturing capital, it’s the counterfeit cash capital, too, producing 90 percent of the country’s counterfeit RMB.

Here is a useful primer by What’s On Xiamen on how to spot the fake stuff.

Gongbei Border Control

You might be able to speed through Gongbei Port and into Macau soon, as Guangdong appears to be tightening visa requirements for Chinese tourists.

A report from the Chinese-language Macau Daily News cited unnamed sources saying local officials in neighbouring Guangdong could limit the number of Macau visas issued for locals, coupled with a limit on overseas spending on credit cards. Despite its reunification with China in 1999, Macau is still considered “overseas”.

Major Hong Kong-listed Casino operators Sands China, Galaxy, MGM China and Wynn Macau saw shares tank on the news on Tuesday, but analysts are split on the speculation.

From Bloomberg:

“Recent weakness in Macau gaming revenue and visitation growth could be partially explained by the visa restrictions and reduction in China UnionPay limits highlighted by the Macau Daily,” Cameron McKnight, an analyst at Wells Fargo & Co., said in a June 25 research note.

“The report on visa tightening is a bit speculative,” said Grant Govertsen, a Macau-based analyst at Union Gaming Group. “We haven’t seen anything so far to convince us this is happening.”

While Reuters reports:

“There has been no restriction of visas,” said Gabriel Chan, analyst at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong

Chan said new measures recently put in place should actually should encourage the flow of visitors by making it easier for residents to apply for a visa and lengthening the opening hours of the border gate that connects Macau to the mainland.

The numbers Macau are dealing with are huge, and could affect the gambling-heavy SAR.
From Bloomberg:

Macau casino gambling revenue rose 7.3 percent in May, the slowest pace since July 2009.

Reuters said:

About 25 million visitors from Greater China flocked to the specially administered region in 2011 – the only place in China where nationals can legally gamble at casinos – making up about 90 percent of total visitors.

Long queues at the Gongbei border between Zhuhai and Macau are an all too often occurrence as foreigners bemoan the sheer volume of people crowding into the border facility.  Unlike at Lo Wu/Luohu Port connecting Shenzhen with Hong Kong, Gongbei Port often doesn’t differentiate between foreigners and locals, resulting in long queues all around.

The last time local entry into Macau was tightened was back in 2008.

The woman dances in Luohu

Tension between foreigners and local Chinese has been rising of late.  First, there was a British guy caught on tape trying to molest a Chinese woman (then beaten), a foreign cellist berating a woman in Chinese, Beijing’s 100-day crackdown on illegal foreigners, and CCTV News host Yang Rui’s vitriolic rant against foreigners on his Weibo account.

Things haven’t been quite so heated down here (things get a bit more normal the further one gets from Beijing).  Still, a Shenzhen woman we told you about earlier, who called for Chinese women to avoid dating and marrying foreign men, has again drawn attention to herself.  This time, she appeared near Grand Theater Subway Station dancing while stripping to her underwear. The woman did the dance around 4 p.m. on May 5 near the entrance of Shenzhen Book City in Luohu District.

She had an mp3 player that played the dance song “Zui Xuan Minzufeng”. Next to her was a sign that had a picture of herself entwined with a foreign man, below which were the words, “I want my chest to be bigger, I want my skin to be paler, I want to be thinner.” The writing goes on to explain that she is looking for people to help her become a new person, and she wants to recover from her failed relationship with the foreigner.

She urged onlookers to contact her, and had her mobile phone number printed on the sign.

Many passers-by gathered to watch her dance, but netizens have expressed contempt for the woman. A netizen named Peng Fei said he supported the foreigner’s decision to leave her. Another named Grey Autumn commented on how unattractive she was.

We’re not sure how stripping in public will help her cause, but we are starting to see why her foreign ex-husband may have left her.

Chengguan cleaning up (from Southern Metropolis Daily)

It appears that Guangzhou is about to get serious when it comes to cleaning up the streets. Anybody who’s walked through the city has likely tripped over trinkets splayed out on sidewalks, as well as sprawling shops and restaurants which seem to swallow up the available sidewalk space. But that could all be coming to an end.

This is a translation from this story in the Southern Metropolis Daily:

Although chaotic hawking is a long-standing phenomenon in most Chinese cities, Guangzhou has decided it won’t let it continue as it always has.

From 8 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday, Guangzhou’s Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau sent more than 5,000 officials, commonly known as chengguan, to crack down on unlicensed street vendors all over the city in about 230 forbidden areas.

Determined to fix the street selling business, the bureau is adopting a “zero tolerance” policy and is trying to rid the streets of all illegal hawking according to law. This special action will last until early October.

The law enforcement officials will write an inquisition notice to unlicensed vendors requiring them to report to a designated place in 15 working days and go through an investigation. A maximum of RMB2,000 could be issued in a fine.

In addition, temporarily detained items and goods during the crackdown will be kept for a limited period of 150 days, while those over 150 days will be handed over to the finance bureau for auctions.

As of 9 p.m. last night, a porridge restaurant around Haizhu Square was spotted by officials. The restaurant occupied most of the sidewalk with tables and chairs, with a width of less than one meter for passers-by.

According to law enforcement officials, this porridge restaurant has been fined five times in the past two years. Some of its tables and chairs and other operation hardware were sold in the latest action.

As we can all see by looking around us, Guangdong is growing fast and the opportunities here are drawing people from all over the world. This is creating some headaches for the Guangdong Provincial Government, which is trying to keep track of everything. With more and more laowai making Guangdong their home, the government has decided to enlist locals to help it police the comings and goings of foreign residents. In a move that is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, the government has a new policy implemented effective May 1 that encourages residents to report any malpractice by foreigners, such as overstaying their visa or working without a proper one. From the venerable China Daily:

The regulation, approved by the provincial government on Jan 21, was posted on the local government website recently and is the first of its kind concerning management of foreigners on the mainland.

The six-chapter, 67-article regulation stipulates that no one is allowed to provide accommodation for foreigners who have overstayed or are without a valid passport.

Property owners violating the rule will be fined three times the amount of the monthly rent they charge.

The regulation came as the booming province has attracted a growing number of foreigners seeking employment and trade opportunities.

More than 63,000 permanent foreign residents are registered in Guangdong and more than 4 million foreigners visit the province annually. But the province has witnessed a growing number of illegal immigrants working or doing business.

To be fair, this stuff should be common sense for anybody that intends to live here, but a good reminder to get your proverbial stuff in order lest your workmate or neighbour rat you out.

Especially in Shenzhen, which will see the Universiade arrive this summer, it’s best to make sure that all your paperwork is in order should anybody come to check up on you.