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Tensions in Hong Kong over people from mainland China pouring in to buy goods erupted in a crowded shopping mall on Sunday, when the police arrested about a dozen people and used pepper spray to subdue hundreds of protesters who had gathered to harangue the cross-border shoppers.

The confrontation inside the Trend Plaza in Tuen Mun, a district close to the Hong Kong border with the mainland, marked an escalation of simmering accusations that mainland shoppers are making life more difficult, and more expensive, for Hong Kong residents.

On Sunday, a crowd of mostly young protesters, many wearing masks, pressed into the mall, which is favored by mainland visitors, and assembled in front of a grocery store full of mainland shoppers. ‘‘Locusts, go back to your mainland,’’ the protesters shouted, using a derogatory term that has spread in recent years.



The police, prepared for trouble after outbursts of confrontation over recent weeks, moved in and used pepper spray. Several protesters and at least one police officer were injured in disputes that broke out on the third floor of the mall.

For 11 weeks last year, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents occupied several streets in the city to demand democracy.

But the mall protest brought into view other resentments among some Hong Kong residents over the spending power, and sheer numbers, of mainland Chinese who visit the city to shop. Mainland Chinese money, they say, has distorted the local economy, driven out family-owned shops and pushed up property prices and rents.

The sharpest resentment is reserved for cross-border traders who, despite laws discouraging their business, commute from China to Hong Kong. They buy up powdered baby formula, medicine, cosmetics and other Hong Kong goods that are cheaper, or considered to be of better quality, and haul them back across the border to resell in China.

‘‘We’re unhappy about those cross-border traders. They come in great numbers. They have changed the local economy for the worse,’’ Simon Cheung, a 27-year-old protester who was pepper-sprayed in the face, said while rinsing himself with bottled water given to him by other protesters.

The traders’ business is especially busy now, as Chinese people prepare to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts from the night of Feb. 18.

Hong Kong’s secretary for security, Lai Tung-kwok, said last Thursday that the authorities would carry out ‘‘special operations’’ to target illegal cross-border trading, especially during the peak season before the holiday.

Many of the protesters who came on Sunday were answering an online call made by Civic Passion and other protest groups, whose leaders argue that Hong Kong’s identity and social fabric are being corrupted by mainland influences.

The groups have called for Hong Kong, which is governed under a system separate from the mainland’s, to cancel a program that allows residents of Shenzhen, a mainland city just across the border, to visit Hong Kong frequently.