Originally Posted by civicmon

It's manned but they do not check people. I went from Zhuhai -> Shenzhen via bus through both the checkpoints. PLA was there but they didn't do anything but watch the cars/buses go through. Also, they are still giving out 5-day visas at Lo Wu but not to Americans still.

This is accurate as of this week. I was just there. UK citizens can now get those visas but they're something like 450HKD/RMB.

Eliminating the SEZ checkpoint is considered the prime reason why Shenzhen has had a massive crime wave in the past year. They used to deport (FWIW) criminals from there and while they still can, there's nothing really stopping those guys from coming back in. It's considered to be the main reason why crime, which was always relatively high vs. the rest of China has gotten much much higher in just the past 12 months.