Not that you need our advice in this area, but we’ll say it anyway. One person recently learned this lesson the hard way when he tried to sneak 84 Kingston-branded NVMe SSDs into mainland China while coming from Macau in the Zhuhai-Macau cross-border industrial zone.
China’s customs department released the March 3 incident (opens in new tab) on his WeChat page. Qingdao customs officials apparently became suspicious when the man tried to take his electric scooter through the “non-declaration channel” and the X-ray machine he was supposed to pass through showed an unknown object hidden in the bumper.
Agents then took apart the scooter’s front bumper and found a set of NVMe SSDs mounted inside the axle tube. After separating the shelves, they photographed the truck.
No word on what happened to the would-be smuggler, but it’s safe to assume he was arrested and is in big trouble. Attempting to import undeclared goods into any country, especially China, is a serious crime. We can’t tell the model or capacity of the SSDs in question from the photos, and the agents didn’t disclose that information.
This is hardly the first case of attempted smuggling we’ve heard of from Chinese customs. In March 2022, a man was caught attaching 160 Intel processors to his body in an attempt to smuggle them across the border. Last December, authorities caught a woman who hid 202 Intel processors and 9 iPhones. (opens in new tab) inside the false abdomen.