Grain Smuggling Trends Shift Toward the Southwest Land Border
Reporters recently visiting the border areas of Guangxi found that since last year, as customs and other relevant departments have stepped up enforcement, smuggling along the Guangxi-Vietnam border has been effectively curbed. Among the smuggling cases investigated and handled, grain smuggling cases, mainly involving rice, have clearly increased, with grain smuggling showing obvious characteristics of scale and professionalization, and new trends emerging such as a shift from water routes to land routes.
Guangxi Border Repeatedly Busts Major Grain Smuggling Cases
According to a notice from the Fangchenggang Intermediate People's Court, the court recently concluded a particularly large rice smuggling case. Six criminals involved in rice smuggling along the China-Vietnam border, including Wu Wenguo, were punished under the law. The six received maximum sentences of 12 years and were fined 8 million yuan.
According to the notice, Wu Wenguo was the general manager of Dongxing Weiguo Agricultural and Sideline Products Co., Ltd. He conspired with Zhong Peilian and others to purchase rice from Vietnam at a price below 3,400 yuan per ton, and without completing import procedures and tax invoices, secretly transported the rice into the country through non-customs piers. Afterwards, part of the smuggled rice was transported to Weiguo Company for packaging and then shipped to the domestic market for sale at higher prices.
According to calculations, between June 2012 and April 2014, Wu Wenguo, Zhong Peilian, Tang Jie, Chen Taiwu, Huang Yingwei, and Wu Weiwei smuggled more than 10,000 tons of rice into the country, evading more than 20 million yuan in taxes due. The court sentenced the above six individuals in accordance with the law.
A review by reporters found that since 2014, law enforcement departments in Dongxing City of Fangchenggang, Longzhou County of Chongzuo, and Jingxi County of Baise have successively cracked multiple major and particularly major rice smuggling criminal cases. The number of rice smuggling cases seized reached as many as one hundred, and more than 10 rice smuggling criminal gangs were dismantled. In some cases, the value even exceeded 100 million yuan.
Professionalized Gangs Brazenly Pursue Profit
Some anti-smuggling law enforcement officials along the Guangxi-Vietnam border analyzed that since last year, the nationwide customs campaign "Green Wind" against agricultural product smuggling has achieved notable results, but the actual situation also shows that the grain smuggling situation along the China-Vietnam border remains severe.
From the perspective of smuggling channels, currently seized cases are mainly smuggling cases at non-customs locations. Breaking up whole shipments into small parts, repackaging and disguising goods, and group-based operations are common features of this grain smuggling. Most are organized and premeditated smuggling crimes planned and controlled by professional smuggling gangs, achieving integration of purchasing, transport, and sales through group operations.
A relevant official from Nanning Customs introduced that smuggled rice along the China-Vietnam border mainly comes from Vietnam. Lawbreakers first place orders abroad, usually using an "ants moving house" style of "breaking up whole shipments into small parts" to bypass customs locations and secretly smuggle goods into the country, then use methods such as changing packaging, mixing in domestic rice, and covert stockpiling to wait for opportunities to transport the goods to domestic circulation markets for sale.
"Profit is the main driver. According to our understanding, compared with domestic rice, rice from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia can in many places achieve three harvests a year, and production and planting costs and labor costs are relatively low. Overall, the price difference is about 400-1,000 yuan per ton, giving it the advantage of high yield and low cost," said Qin Zelu, president of the Guangxi Grain Industry Association.
According to a notice from the Fangchenggang Intermediate People's Court, in the rice smuggling case of Wu Wenguo and others, after purchasing rice from Vietnam at low prices, the defendants arranged personnel to protect the goods at a price of no more than 380 yuan per ton, and hired dump truck drivers to go to non-customs piers to load and transport smuggled rice into the country and to "watch the roads." Usually, the price at which the defendants bought rice in Vietnam was basically around 3,000 yuan/ton, and selling it domestically brought around 4,000 yuan/ton.
In addition, there are many border smuggling routes, and investigation and handling at non-customs locations is difficult. In some border villages and towns in border counties and cities such as Pingxiang and Longzhou, reporters saw that along the border, China and Vietnam are connected by both water and land, with high mountains and dense forests and countless narrow paths. Most places lack natural barriers and physical isolation facilities. In addition, personnel exchanges along the China-Vietnam border are also becoming increasingly frequent. It is reported that in rice smuggling cases previously seized by Nanning Customs, the proportion of smuggling at non-customs locations exceeded 90%.
Anti-Smuggling Efforts Require Further Improvement of Coordination Mechanisms
Reporters learned that the overall situation for border prevention and control of grain smuggling remains severe, and some new trends have recently emerged.
First, grain smuggling activities such as rice and corn have begun to shift toward the southwestern border of Guangxi. The area along the Beilun River in Dongxing was once an active smuggling zone nationwide. After sustained and in-depth strict crackdowns and comprehensive rectification since 2012, especially key crackdowns on rice, sugar, and frozen goods from epidemic areas, order in the highly regulated sections along the Beilun River has now improved markedly. An official from the Dongxing Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau introduced that in order to evade crackdowns, smuggling activities continuously "drift" and "roam" in border areas and seek opportunities to break through. A new trend has already appeared in which smuggling activities have begun to drift toward border areas such as Chongzuo and Baise in Guangxi. These places have high mountains and dense forests and numerous routes, making prevention even more difficult.
Second, in some border areas, smugglers use machinery to dig open routes and connect them to national defense patrol roads to carry out smuggling, which indirectly reflects the rampant nature of smuggling activities. Wei Jiayun, deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Pingxiang Municipal Party Committee, told reporters that since the second half of last year, lawbreakers have used forklifts and excavators from the Vietnamese side to dig routes connecting to China's national defense patrol roads, and after being stopped, repeatedly dug them open again. Because the national defense patrol roads are connected to domestic highways, once the routes are connected, smuggling activities will become more convenient.
Some grassroots officials reported that at present, the governments of all border counties (cities) have established anti-smuggling offices to take charge of coordinating forces from all sides in anti-smuggling work. However, if coordination is weak, it is easy for anti-smuggling to become "the work of the anti-smuggling office." At present, while continuing to carry out special crackdown campaigns on smuggling of agricultural products such as rice, it is also necessary to accelerate interdepartmental and regional coordination and cross-border joint anti-smuggling efforts, improve relevant safeguard measures, and establish and perfect a long-term mechanism for border smuggling prevention and control so as to address both symptoms and root causes.