China's customs handled 2,773 smuggling cases till October

APD NEWS

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Chinese customs registered 2,773 smuggling cases in the first 10 months of the year, said a customs spokesman on Thursday.

The "Sword Guarding the Country's Gate 2017" campaign aimed to take tough measures against smuggling, according to Huang Songping, spokesman of the General Administration of Customs.

Fifty-six of the cases involved rice smuggling, with a total value of 1.6 billion yuan (242 million US dollars), Huang said.

Customs also dealt with 233 criminal smuggling cases involving arms and ammunition, 474 involving drugs, and 86 related to endangered species.

Huang said that customs would coordinate with other agencies to raise anti-smuggling efficiency in the future.

Previous cases this year involved the import of Thai white sugar, with nine arrested for trying to evade customs inspections by disguising their ship as a domestic vessel and entering the port of Yancheng, which is not open to overseas traffic.

China also cracked down on an oil smuggling ring in which a criminal gang bought 400 million yuan worth of overseas oil products and sold it to gas stations in Zhejiang Province, the customs authority said in a notice last month.

China’s environment ministry said this week that as many as 259 people had been arrested this year for smuggling more than 300,000 tonnes of foreign waste into the country for recycling and reprocessing.

(CHINA DAILY)