Cover your face: For the fourth time in three weeks, somebody has been caught making an attempt to smuggle electronics into China to benefit from enormous worth variations and evade import duties. The newest case is Hong Kong’s largest crackdown in 5 years, however the perpetrators’ strategies had been far much less imaginative than beforehand reported makes an attempt.
This week, Hong Kong authorities reported that they’d caught the most important try and smuggle digital {hardware} into mainland China since 2018. The announcement got here days after three different tried makes an attempt to smuggle chips into the nation from Macau.
A 61-year-old truck driver tried to smuggle electronics price HK$30 million (US$3.8 million) from Hong Kong to mainland China by way of the Man Kam To management level. Attempts to evade tariffs on gadgets comparable to CPUs or smartphones by way of Chinese customs have turn out to be widespread over the previous few years, as these gadgets are dearer in mainland China than in lots of different international locations. The incidents primarily occurred at checkpoints bordering Hong Kong and Macau attributable to financial variations between the 2 areas and the mainland.
Customs officers on the Macau checkpoint foiled three separate makes an attempt in March. The newest concerned a person strapping 239 Intel CPUs to his physique. A couple of days in the past, somebody on the market tried to cover 84 SSDs within the hole steering stem of his scooter. In mid-March, one other particular person tried to smuggle 160 processors by sticking them on himself.
Hiding contraband beneath clothes appears to be a preferred tactic. In 2017, a girl in Shenzhen (presumably from Hong Kong) tried the expertise on 102 iPhones with out success. Another Hong Kong incident in 2021 concerned a 256-CPU system valued at $123,000. Last yr, a girl from Macau tried to cover 202 Intel processors and a number of other iPhones in a pretend pregnant stomach.
In distinction to the latest Hong Kong incident, there aren’t any fancy tips, and it would not appear to work anyway. It’s unclear, although, what number of of every smuggler authorities caught managed to evade detection. After all, the frequency of reporting suggests it is a worthy enterprise.
Anyway, the quantity of {hardware} the Hong Kong truck driver was making an attempt to usher in was an excessive amount of to strap on – so he simply crated them and lied about what was inside. The driver has about 30 wood containers marked with digital screens that could be topic to lighter import duties. However, X-ray scans revealed that the crates contained almost 510,000 items of kit, together with CPUs, storage drives, laptops and smartphones.
Although the smuggler was arrested, he has been launched on bail pending additional investigation. The crime carries a most penalty of HK$2 million (about US$254,000) and 7 years in jail.