Permissive Politics and Entrepreneurial Transgression in a Chinese Border Town

Contemporary experiences of Han Chinese traders in Hekou, a remote town on the China-Vietnam border inform discussions of permissive politics and entrepreneurial transgression at the peripheries of the state. Permissive politics facilitates the transnational movement of goods across national borders in both formal and informal ways. Examination of cross-border smuggling as both an everyday strategy of profit-making and an act of ordinary transgression clarifies the ways in which borderland permissiveness normalizes and even rewards certain unauthorized practices on the part of traders, vendors and individuals who undertake entrepreneurial activities.