On a dusty industrial lot in northern Hong Kong, a group of travelers sheltered in the shade away from the pressing July heat, packing old cloth bags and backpacks with Styrofoam to protect a more precious cargo: smuggled meat.
Crowded amid the warehouses of Sheung Shui, a remote suburb near the mainland border, the group of around 40 are about to take frozen Brazilian beef into China to feed a growing demand for meat that is unsated by local produce or approved imports.
The part-time smugglers, known as “feet” within the trade, are part of an underground industry that has boomed since Beijing launched a crackdown on meat smuggling last year.
“Before they used trucks, but those were for high-quality beef from Japan and New Zealand and maybe America,” one Hong Kong smuggler, 36-year-old Alan Wong, told reporters, explaining smugglers could earn 200 to 300 yuan (US$30 to 50) per trip.
Wong’s story, along with interviews with a dozen customs agents, anti-smuggling officials and traders, paints a picture of an illegal trade along China’s borders with Hong Kong and Vietnam, where smugglers are taking bigger risks with food safety as the crackdown drives them deeper underground.
The scale of the smuggling has infuriated legitimate exporters from countries such as Australia, who say black market meat is 30 to 60 percent cheaper due to high import duties, while the methods now being used raise consumer health concerns.
“You have people stuck with meat on the Vietnam side of the border they can’t sell. They start taking it up and down the river and breaking it into smaller units to bring it in,” said a Shanghai-based meat industry advisor. “It’s more underground and therefore more dangerous.”
‘ZOMBIE MEAT’
China is the world’s top meat consumer, but the mainland has long kept a tight grip over imports, often citing safety worries such as mad cow disease as the main reason behind bans on major producers such as the US and India.
Consequently, demand has run ahead of domestic production, creating an opportunity for smugglers. US officials said in March “huge” amounts of beef were still getting into China.
Seizures of smuggled meat have jumped close to threefold this year and generated headlines that have alarmed consumers even in a country wearily familiar with food scandals.
Local media reports said in June authorities had seized 100,000 tonnes of smuggled frozen meat, some of it so-called “zombie meat” up to 40 years old. Customs officials and police told reporters the oldest meat found this year had been four-five years old.
The greater scrutiny means customs agents often no longer turn a blind eye to refrigerated trucks coming into China, forcing smugglers to take more hazardous routes.
“People are bringing over one box at a time, just like ants moving home,” a customs official in the city of Changsha, surnamed Huang, told reporters.
In Hong Kong, Reuters reporters saw people repackaging cases of meat labelled “Boi Brasil” and “Cargill.”
A spokesman for Boi Brasil said the Brazilian company had no knowledge of its produce being smuggled into China and had no further comment.
Cargill spokesman Mike Martin said the US agribusiness giant sold beef to well-established, government-regulated distributors in Hong Kong.
“Once the beef is received by distributors, we have no control over subsequent sales and movement of the beef,” he said.
NIGHT RAID
In one of a spate of recent raids, anti-smuggling agents surrounded a 20-tonne container truck in the early hours of June 1 in Changsha, in southern Hunan Province.
What they found churned stomachs in China and beyond — rotting, expired beef, originally from India, that had been smuggled in small batches from Vietnam.
“When we opened the container it reeked because it hadn’t been put back into cold storage,” Changsha’s Huang said.
The meat typically enters China through border towns like Dongxing, in coastal Guangxi Province, separated from Vietnam’s Mong Cai by the narrow Ka Long River.
Smuggler gangs take the meat in container trucks from Vietnamese ports such as Haiphong to bonded warehouses in towns like Mong Cai (孟凱), where shipments are broken into small parcels, breaking the “cold chain” and allowing the meat to thaw.
“They then stick it onto 50 or so motorbikes which slowly drip it out along the border where it is carried on small sampan boats to a truck waiting on the other side,” said Hanoi-based Scott Roberton, who has investigated border smuggling for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
SUPPLY CHAIN
Once in China, the meat is transported, often in unrefrigerated trucks, to massive wholesale markets across the country’s south, where it is finally put back in cold storage and sold on to supermarkets, processing plants and rural markets. across the country.
Among the biggest is the Red Star cold meat market in Hunan. Changsha customs say around one-third of the 800,000 tonnes of meat that goes through it every year is from “unclear origins” outside mainland China.
Su Weijun (蘇衛容), the market’s deputy general manager, said that was “nonsense.”
“Perhaps before a small amount of meat got through, but now we are inspecting much more strictly,” he said.
However, a steady stream of food scandals in recent years have made traders and consumers wary.
Tang Ming, 23, a student from Guizhou Province, said she now avoids low-end food stalls and opts for better-known brands.
“In wet markets I try now to avoid buying frozen meat - you just don’t know how long it’s been kept,” she said.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, people have been asking if Taiwan is the next Ukraine. At a G7 meeting of national leaders in January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Taiwan “could be the next Ukraine” if Chinese aggression is not checked. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that if Russia is not defeated, then “today, it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it can be Taiwan.” China does not like this rhetoric. Its diplomats ask people to stop saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” However, the rhetoric and stated ambition of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Taiwan shows strong parallels with