HONG KONG: Ten children in school uniform have been caught trying to smuggle almost 1 million yuan (RM622,247) worth of mobile phones and expensive Chinese delicacies across the border from Hong Kong into Shenzhen.
The children said they were not trying to make money, but had been promised food at McDonald’s or ice cream if they successfully sneaked the goods across the border, according to a Chinese news website.
The children were among the 28,000 pupils who cross the border from Shenzhen to attend school in Hong Kong each day– a number which has been growing over the past five years, according to Hong Kong government statistics.
On Tuesday afternoon, the children were lining up to go through the schoolchild border crossing at Huanggang wearing their uniforms and carrying “bulging” backpacks, according to Shenzhen’s official online news outlet Sznews.com. The ages of the children were not given.
“Normal children’s backpacks usually only have books and stationery,” a customs officer was quoted as saying, whose full name was not given. “But these children’s bags were all bulging. From the outside appearance you could see they were filled with things.”
Customs officers stopped the children and found in their backpacks 90 Apple iPhone 7s, 100 iPhone 6s, 20 Samsung S8 and 10kg of “bird’s nests” – an edible Chinese delicacy made from solidified bird saliva.
Customs officers seized the goods and lectured the children on what they had done wrong, according to the article.
Offenders had promised to buy the children McDonald’s or ice cream if they carried the valuable cargo through the gate, in an attempt to avoid customs.
A Huanggang customs official was quoted as saying that traders, who buy goods tax free in Hong Kong to sell at a profit on the mainland, had been trying new tricks to lure and threaten pupils into smuggling goods for them.
Customs officials on the mainland and in Hong Kong are working to crackdown on cross-border smuggling and are educating pupils about the issue, the report said.
