The Hong Kong police responded to the upsurge in a variety of ways, including increasing police presence in areas with concentrations of gold shops and advising shop owners on security. The measures were effective to some extent against “military-style” robberies, which had generated the most public concern, but they had little impact on other forms of armed robbery. Explanation for the rise in robberies must take account of the following: (1) common targets were building societies, convenience stores, gasoline stations and cash in transit; (2) availability of guns in Hong Kong increased throughout the 1980s; (3) crime rates in China had been rising, especially in the southern provinces, and some of the Hong Kong robberies may have involved mainlanders; and (4) a large proportion of the robbers were amateurs who turned to robbery because they had become economically marginalized by the transfer of low-skilled jobs into adjacent areas of China. Tables