Border City Cracks Down Smuggling by Container TrucksCustoms officers at the Gongbei Checkpoint in Zhuhai City, south China's Guangdong Province, checked 29 cases of smuggling using container trucks shuttling between cities in Guangdong and Macao in the first six months of the year.The smuggling cases involves an aggregate value of 11 million yuan. Both statistics went up by 42 percent and 83 percent from the same period last year, respectively. Macao returned to China on December 20, 1999. Zhuhai is the nearest city to Macao on the Chinese mainland and Gongbei is the only land customs checkpoint to enter Macao from the Chinese mainland. Gongbei has become the country's second biggest land port of entry and exit in terms of the number of vehicles passing through. More than 4,000 container trucks go through the checkpoint daily. The rise in smuggling cases by using container trucks is attributed to the lack of a thorough examination of empty container trucks or cars. But customs officers with Gongbei Checkpoint have now tightened their inspections of loaded or empty container trucks shuttling from Guangdong to Macao. In another development, customs officers with Nanning City, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, uncovered 421 cases of smuggling from January to June, with the value totaling 236.7 million yuan. Guangxi borders Viet Nam and sits on the northern bank of the Beibu Gulf. It has convenient transport conditions both on land and on the sea and has long been used by smugglers as an ideal place to smuggle cargo in and out of the country. |
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