Almost 800 processors under the hood of the bus. The Chinese go to great lengths to bring them into the country

Customs officers from the Gongbei seaport thwarted an attempt to smuggle contraband worth as much as 137,000. dollars (approx. PLN 568 thousand).

Chinese customs officials found 780 processors under the hood of a bus

Several smugglers from the Middle Kingdom have just risen to the heights of their creativity, hiding valuable processors inside the engine compartment of the bus. Clever placement of the chips was designed to fool metal detectors and get through customs into China. The smugglers hoped to pass unnoticed from Macau to the mainland city of Zhuhai.

As he writes, however, they were unlucky, because the customs officers delegated their bus for additional control. After a very thorough search of the vehicle, the processors were found and confiscated. A photo showing a huge number of Intel chips was also made available.

The Chinese smuggle processors for power. What for? It’s about VAT

This is another in a series of attempts to smuggle computer components in China. The Chinese have been doing their best to bring electronics from Macau or Hong Kong to the continental part of the country for a long time. Both of these cities are now special administrative regions of the PRC (until the end of the 1990s they were colonies of Portugal and Great Britain), they operate under special rules and have a significant autonomy in internal affairs.

Traveling from China to Macau or Hong Kong and back involves going through customs control. It is illegal to transport electronics from these regions to China without paying duty, because in the PRC goods of this type are subject to VAT at the rate of 13%. Meanwhile, in special administrative regions it is zero.

Most (caught) smugglers try to hide computer components – most commonly CPUs and SSDs – by gluing them to their bodies. In March last year, a man was caught passing through border control with 160 Intel processors glued to him, in December a woman tried to hide 200 processors in a similar way. In July this year a man who was traveling with as many as 420 fast SSDs was detained,

Increasingly, however, customs officers detect much more creative attempts to transport electronics to China. In March this year found 84 SSDs placed inside the handlebar post of an e-scooter. A dozen or so days ago, a car was stopped, to the chassis of which smugglers attached 837 processors, 900 RAM and 10 SSDs. It was one of the biggest attempts in recent years.