Smuggling of goods ranging from oil to frozen food is costing China's treasury billions of dollars each year, threatening the national economy and possibly even communist rule despite a marathon crackdown, officials said yesterday.
Customs officials have prosecuted more than 90,000 smuggling cases over the past five years, involving goods worth 200 billion yuan (US$24 billion), said Sheng Guangzu, China's deputy customs minister.
But still, smuggling is "directly affecting national tax revenue, hurting national economic safety, debasing social morality and even endangering our party's ruling basis," said a report issued at a news conference by Sheng.
Customs officials vowed to apply more sophisticated technology and methods against smugglers who they said are getting shrewder and taking advantage of freer trade across the Chinese mainland's frontier with Hong Kong to evade tariffs.
"We will maintain pressure against smuggling activities," said Lu Bing, director-general of the State Administration of Customs.
The communist government launched a sweeping anti-smuggling crackdown in the late 1990s after realizing that the massive loss of import duties could threaten the solvency of China's treasury.
Communist leaders worry that bribery of party officials by smuggling gangs could undermine party control.
Sheng didn't answer a question about how much money the treasury still was losing annually. But he said anti-smuggling efforts have led in recent years to annual increases of 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion) in import duties.
Drugs, guns, sexually explicit films and other contraband make up just a small portion of the goods smuggled into China. The rest includes a wide range of otherwise legal products such as oil, cigarettes, liquor, cars, industrial machinery and frozen food.
Many smuggled goods are brought openly through Chinese ports, with importers either lying about the value of the shipment or bribing Customs inspectors.
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