Not that you need our advice in this area, but we'll say it anyway: "don't smuggle PC hardware into China. You will get caught." A man recently learned this lesson the hard way when he attempted to sneak 84 Kingston-branded NVMe SSDs into mainland China, while coming from Macao at the Zhuhai-Macao Cross-Border Industrial Zone.
China's customs department posted about the March 3rd incident (opens in new tab) on its WeChat page. The Qingmao Customs agents apparently became suspicious when the man attempted to bring his electric scooter through the "non-declaration channel" and the x-ray machine he had to pass it through showed an unknown object hidden in the bumper.
Agents then took apart the front bumper of the scooter and found the set of NVMe SSDs taped together inside the axel tube. After detaching the drives from each other, they photographed the haul.
There's no word on what happened to the would-be smuggler, but we have to assume that he was arrested and is in big trouble. Trying to bring undeclared goods into any country, especially China, is a serious crime. From the photos, we can't discern the model or capacity of the SSDs in question and the agents did not disclose that information.
This is hardly the first instance of attempted smuggling we've heard about from Chinese customs. In March 2022, a man was caught taping 160 Intel CPUs to his body in an attempt to sneak them across the border. In December of last year, authorities caught a woman who had 202 Intel CPUs and 9 iPhones hidden (opens in new tab) inside a fake belly.
