South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guangdong Province successfully cracked down on hundreds of smuggling cases in 1999.

Police and anti-smuggling forces of the autonomous region solved 680 cases in 1999, involving goods worth over 136 million yuan (16.4 million US dollars). Customs collected a total of 990 million yuan in import and export taxes, 51 percent more than in 1998. Police also arrested 56 smugglers. Twenty nine of them were sent to prison.

The smuggling-crackdown Customs Office at Guangzhou said that smuggling is becoming more rampant at the moment. In 1999, the office cracked 375 smuggling cases, involving goods worth over 550 million yuan. Some 274 smugglers were arrested and 106 of them were imprisoned.