HEAVY pressure by Hong Kong authorities has significantly reduced seaborne smuggling, forcing criminals to turn to increasingly sophisticated and imaginative land-based methods to get their goods onto the lucrative Chinese and local black markets.
Police believe the effectiveness of the Anti-Smuggling Taskforce has caused smugglers to ''try every trick in the book'' to get their goods across the border.
Police sources said the latest methods used by smugglers included lorries with false walls and floors, sophisticated packaging designed to hide goods and even kamikaze runs which involve a troop of smugglers willing to sacrifice themselves to allow a few others to slip through undetected.
''Old methods like hiding contraband in vehicle panels and false bottom containers have been refined to make their use much harder to detect,'' a source said. ''There is even evidence of lorries being purposely rebuilt specifically for smuggling.
''Another method used to smuggle drugs, cash, jewellery and other small but valuable items is to send a whole team of mules [people carrying contraband on their person] through in the likelihood that if even only a few get past the checkpoints it would still be worth it.
''The bosses don't care; they can hire mules for a pittance in China and if, say, five out of 20 get through, the profits are still high and they aren't concerned with the ones who are caught.
''Smuggling is about making money and life is cheap in China.'' The increase in smuggling led to the February 1991 formation of the joint police and British Navy Anti-Smuggling Taskforce.
