Two Japanese employees working at the China branches of major Japanese heavy electrical machinery giants were caught red-handed at Dalian Customs, suspected of concealing dysprosium and terbium—heavy rare earths used in high-end military applications—inside large machinery to smuggle them out of the country.
On December 21, Guo Dianli, a former curator at the Nanjing Museum, filed a real-name report against former director Xu Huping, accusing him of massively and illegally embezzling and smuggling cultural relics relocated from the Palace Museum during his tenure, and selling them to overseas businessmen and domestic artifact dealers for huge profits.
In 2025, the Guangzhou Customs Anti-Smuggling Bureau deployed 265 police officers to carry out simultaneous raids in Guangzhou, Foshan and Shenzhen, dismantling 2 gangs smuggling blood samples of pregnant women. In total, over 100,000 blood samples were illegally smuggled out of the country, generating illegal profits of more than 30 million yuan, covering 23 provinces across the country.
On April 20, 1999, central leaders issued instructions to thoroughly investigate the Xiamen Yuanhua smuggling case, and the “April 20” special task force was established to probe the smuggling and corruption of Lai Changxing’s Yuanhua Group.
After the Yuanhua case broke out in 2000, Lai Changxing fled to Canada and hid for many years.