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Once feted, Hong Kong has recently become a centre of civil unrest. In this paper, we situate these emergent politics through a case study of corruption and everyday life in Kowloon Walled City, a mainland Chinese enclave in British Hong Kong, which developed notoriety as a freestanding grey economy. Drawing from oral testimonies of police officers, triad members and local residents, we excavate the lived experience of confinement within this contested space. These accounts reconstruct the Walled City as a 'quasi-carceral' site of enclosure, a zone of colonial exceptionalism and a hybrid cultural space. Through this case study, we historicize current debates in carceral geography, humanize recent interventions in urban scholarship and analyse the shifting politics at the frontier of Chinese expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the smuggling out of democratic leaders after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 and China's resumption of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, China applied a ‘united front’ tactic to recruit Hong Kong triad societies to the Communist camp. Consequently, triad leaders were able to set foot in China and bridge up with officials and state enterprises. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that when political dynamics is involved, both the traditional structural and social network approaches are insufficient to explain triad-organized crime. Therefore, social capital perspective is proposed. Using two case studies, it was discovered that the triad leaders converted the social capital they developed in mainland China into economic capital through illegitimate means in the stock market. The paper concludes by highlighting the similarities and differences between this triad-organized crime and other forms of Chinese organized crime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]