More than 4,200 kilograms of drugs were seized last year by customs officers in South China's Guangdong Province, thanks to a heightened anti-smuggling campaign.
The quantity was 20 times more than the amount recovered the year earlier, said customs officer Chen Lin.
Guangdong, one of China's most economically advanced regions, is a major trading gateway for the nation.
Chen said yesterday 71 suspects were detained last year in relation to drug smuggling offenses.
Guangdong Customs launched in May a special campaign to focus on fighting the smuggling of drugs.
At the start of the offensive, local customs cracked the country's biggest smuggling case, seizing imported heroin weighing more than 375 kilograms, 25 kilograms of caffeine and almost 1,950 kilograms of ephedrine.
A total of 25 suspects, including Hong Kong and Macao residents, were detained.
The bust was believed to have smashed a drug smuggling, sales and production group that was being controlled by overseas interests.
The gang was active in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, and Dongguan at the mouth of the Pearl River.
Guangdong Customs uncovered 6,758 smuggling cases last year, worth about 2.7 billion yuan (US$330 million).
Of them, almost 40 cases were estimated to be worth at least 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) each. They had a combined total of 1.6 billion yuan (US$192.8 million).
Most of the drug smuggling was attempted in Guangdong waters by using container and cargo trucks that had been operating across the borders between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.
Wenjindu and Huanggang in Shenzhen and Gongbei in Zhuhai were the major border checkpoints where many smuggling cases - in addition to just drugs - were uncovered last year.
About 2,250 of all smuggling cases worth 206 million yuan (US$24.8 million) were discovered in Guangdong waters, Chen said. More than 96 per cent of marine smuggling cases were cracked at the mouth of the Pearl River.
Industrial oil, edible oil, CDs, cars and parts and computers were among the items seized.
The big price gap in industrial and edible oil between the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao has prompted more smugglers to try and bring the products into the mainland in recent years, Chen said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 30, 2003)
