Customs officials swoop on smuggling from HK, Macao

Customs officers in South China's Guangdong province cracked 9,741 shuike smuggling cases involving 1.34 billion yuan ($215 million) last year.

The term shuike refers to people who visit Hong Kong and Macao at least once a day to smuggle electronic products, food, milk powder, medicines or other products from the two special administrative regions into the Chinese mainland to take advantage of the price gap.

With online purchases booming on the mainland in recent years, more people have taken to such smuggling. They can easily earn 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan a month by selling the smuggled goods online to mainland consumers.

Chen Jianwen, deputy director of Guangdong Customs, said customs departments across the province have cracked 11 smuggling gangs as well as smuggling channels and networks in the past year. A total of 431 suspects, including people from the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, have been detained, Chen said.

The province's law enforcement departments promised on Jan 15 to strengthen cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao to fight against this form of smuggling.

Luo Ou, an official of the Guangdong provincial government, said that as such smuggling usually peaks during major Chinese festivals, campaigns will be launched for the Lunar New Year to crack down on illegal cross-border activities.

Luo urged relevant departments to draw up a blacklist of shuike smugglers who have violated exit-and-entry regulations more than three times.

"Those who are on the blacklist will no longer be granted travel permits to visit Hong Kong and Macao for a few years," Luo said.

Special channels have been opened for people visiting Hong Kong and Macao more than once a day. Travelers using them are subject to strict examination, Luo said.

"The growing number of shuike smugglers has affected the normal operation of checkpoints in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, which border Hong Kong and Macao respectively," he said.