Last year, customs officers nationwide seized more than 210,000 tonnes of smuggled rice
Yunnan: Building bridges and using boats to brazenly smuggle rice into the country
Recently, the General Administration of Customs publicly announced the results of the 2014 nationwide customs "Green Wind" special operation to combat agricultural product smuggling. In 2014, customs authorities nationwide filed and handled a total of 13,316 agricultural product smuggling cases, with a case value of 44.898 billion yuan and suspected evaded tax payments of 9.282 billion yuan. Among these, in the fight against rice smuggling, a total of 467 criminal and administrative rice smuggling cases were seized over the year, with a case value of 1.255 billion yuan, involving 466 million yuan in taxes, and 210,100 tonnes of smuggled rice verified.
On a night last September, a reporter accompanied anti-smuggling officers during an investigation along the China-Vietnam border at Hekou, Yunnan, and captured these images. At the scene, at least more than 200 Vietnamese border residents were busy at work, carrying bags of goods continuously across the river into China. About a minute and a half after the reporter started filming, these two border residents suddenly sensed something was wrong. Their first reaction was that China Customs had come to investigate smuggling. After they drove their boat away, the tightly organized carrying team that had just been working in an orderly manner quickly scattered.
If these Vietnamese border residents still had some fear of China Customs anti-smuggling officers, then the smugglers at a China-Myanmar border location in Ruili were utterly brazen. Even in broad daylight, the smuggling here did not pause in the slightest. Each ferry boat carried a truck loaded with smuggled rice, quickly sneaking the rice into the country.
Kunming Customs anti-smuggling police: Those trucks are all suspected of smuggling. They directly use the ferry, pull the vehicle onto the ferry, pull the vehicle onto the ferry, and dock on the opposite bank. This shortens the transport time and also shortens our inspection time.
Family gangs operate by remote control; multiple gangs and multiple routes carry out smuggling
Not only is the smuggling into the country carried out in a short time, making inspection extremely difficult. Anti-smuggling officers also told us that these smugglers play cat and mouse with customs anti-smuggling officers every day. As long as a vehicle or person suspected of being customs appears nearby, dedicated lookouts will pass on the warning, and these smugglers will quickly withdraw. So how do customs officers carry out inspections?
In fact, as early as the beginning of April 2014, the Yunnan Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau obtained leads on this smuggling gang from multiple channels. However, the gang hiding behind those carrying out the smuggling never showed itself for a long time. In order to clarify the smuggling chain, the reporter followed customs anti-smuggling officers in a tracking investigation of these smuggling vehicles.
The freight yard located in Kaiyuan, Yunnan, is a place one of the routes must pass through. This is because the drivers all need to go over the weighbridge here and collect their pay based on weight. The multiple links, including overseas supply, sneaking goods into the country, and domestic transport, were all operated by completely different gangs working in division of labour, and the core members of the gang behind it never appeared. However, relying on these weighbridge receipts that could be exchanged for commission, anti-smuggling officers found a lead.
Li Mao, deputy captain of the directly affiliated team of the Kunming Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau: A family-style smuggling gang headed by a certain Yang, mainly smuggling grain such as rice and corn / directing operations remotely from behind the scenes, and the members of this gang had family members as the backbone. There were father, mother, son, and daughter-in-law.
On September 18, 2014, Kunming Customs dispatched more than 400 anti-smuggling police officers to carry out simultaneous arrests in four places: Dali, Hekou, Ruili and Kunming. They captured 15 main criminal suspects including Yang in one operation, and seized about 320 tonnes of smuggled rice and 42 tonnes of corn at the scene. Investigation verified that since 2012, Yang's gang had long organized sources of goods such as rice and corn in Myanmar and Vietnam, and by hiring border residents and other methods, smuggled grain from non-customs crossing points in places such as Ruili and Hekou into the country, then sent it via provincial railway stations to Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei and 13 other provinces and cities for sale and profit. In total, about more than 40,000 tonnes of grain were smuggled, with a case value of about 150 million yuan.
Smuggled rice endangers national food security
We just saw that much of the smuggled rice flowed to grain-producing areas such as Hunan and Hubei. Why do these places, which produce rice locally, still need to buy smuggled rice from outside?
Because Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Myanmar have abundant sunshine, most places can grow two or even three crops of rice, and in addition their labour costs are low. Therefore, their rice prices themselves are relatively low. In our country, because of the grain purchase and storage system and grain price subsidy policies, the price gap between domestic and foreign rice is further magnified.
Zhan Li, director of the Kunming Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau: It should average around two yuan. It depends on the quality and variety of the grain. Generally speaking, there is a price difference of between one yuan and three yuan (per kilogram).
Judging from the circumstances of the cases, in the main grain-producing areas to which these smuggled rice flowed, grain farmers all sold the grain they grew at the price subsidized by the state, while at the same time buying cheaper smuggled rice from the market to eat. Some even directly bought this kind of smuggled rice at a low price and then sold it at a high price.
Wang Shihai of the Macro-Control Department of the State Administration of Grain: It has caused a relatively large impact on the domestic grain market, increased downward pressure on domestic grain market prices, and within a certain scope led to varying degrees of inversion between domestic raw grain and grain prices in grain-producing areas and sales areas.
Under the long-term national food security strategy, the total supply and demand of grain such as rice in our country is basically balanced. The massive influx of smuggled rice that has not undergone inspection and quarantine will not only break this balance and make grain price subsidies to farmers ineffective, but even bring serious hidden dangers to the safety of consumers' dining tables.
Zhu Feng, deputy director of the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of the General Administration of Customs: It endangers the vital interests of the broad masses of farmers. This agricultural product illegally smuggled by evading supervision by relevant customs departments poses serious food hygiene and safety hidden dangers, and constitutes a serious threat to the food safety of the people.