Tied Around His Body, Hong Kong Man Smuggled 256 Intel CPUs To China

China's high chip prices and taxes have fueled smuggling. (photo: doc. Chinese customs)

JAKARTA - A man was surprisingly arrested by the Chinese customs for smuggling 256 Central Processing Units (CPU). Interestingly, this man tied all the CPUs in his body.

Citing SCMP, Sunday, July 18, customs officers found and confiscated a total of 256 units of Intel-branded CPUs strapped to the driver's chest and calf during an inspection on 16 June.

The driver was stopped and searched because he was "behaving abnormally and looking nervous" during a normal inspection at the entrance to mainland China. According to authorities, the CPUs the man was trying to smuggle in were Intel i7-10700 and i9-10900Ks.

Not only one, officers also intercepted a man of the same profession 10 days later who was carrying 52 Intel CPUs, now the driver smuggled them by inserting the package between two vehicle seats.

This is likely due to the exorbitant import tax in China, and partly due to the current chip shortage. Now everyone wants chips but can't easily afford them, so this smuggling will allow them to resell them at high prices.

Not long ago, chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) promised to address the shortage of these chipsets soon, by increasing capacity as soon as possible, but shortages persist, with many customers in China scrambling to secure supplies from factories.

While this isn't the first time Chinese customs have intercepted contraband chips from Hong Kong, two such cases in one month could indicate a spike in chip demand.

Earlier, on June 16, three men in Hong Kong attacked and robbed a man with an electronic chip worth about US$644,000, making it a rare high-tech robbery case in Hong Kong.

Then, in 2013, Shenzhen customs arrested a gang of smugglers involving 12 people and confiscated 120,000 chips in a raid on an underground Chinese electronics factory.