BEIJING: A concrete tunnel into Hong Kong dug by Chinese smugglers has been unearthed by border officers. The tunnel was equipped with lights, vents, steel reinforcements and even rails to transport goods, Chinese domestic media reported.
The underground path had “one end in a rented garage in Shenzhen and another in a thicket of reeds in Hong Kong, totally concealed”, said a report. “It was dug in a totally professional way,” it said.
The unidentified smugglers sought to build a 40-metre-long underground passage and installing a rail track and wagon with a block-and-tackle system to ferry goods such as cell phones and tablet computers.
The tunnel stood about 0.8 metres wide and 1 metre high, just big enough for an adult to crawl through. It started from a remote area of Shenzhen, in a garage full of bags packed with sludge dug up from the tunnel, and ended in a cluster of tall reeds a few metres past a river dividing mainland China and Hong Kong.
The project was estimated to have cost three million yuan ($490,000) and taken four months to build.
