State Councilor Wu Yi made the call during a national meeting of customs heads in Beijing.

"Customs departments across China (should) continue the anti-smuggling campaign, crack down on swindling of tax rebates for exports, clamp down on evasion and arbitrage of hard currencies, and safeguard the order of imports and exports," Xinhua said quoting Wu.

Statistics published during the meeting show customs officials uncovered 1,816 major cases of smuggling last year, up 34.4 percent from 1999.

The value of the goods smuggled was 9.1 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion), 4.9 percent more than the year before, the agency said.

Last year's campaign turned up 4,458 smuggling suspects, of whom 2,257 were arrested, according to Qian Guanlin, director of the general customs administration.

The effort helped boost government coffers, as customs authorities could turn in 2.5 billion yuan (US$301 million) from confiscations and fines, Qian said.

The call for officials to keep up the drive comes as China is in the middle of unraveling its largest corruption and smuggling scandal yet.

According to leaked information, the massive operation, centered around Yuanhua Group in southeastern China's Fujian province, raked in 6.6 billion dollars worth of smuggled goods in the 1990s.

Fourteen officials and employees of the Yuanhua Group have so far been sentenced to death for their roles in the operation which according to court documents included the smuggling of cigarettes, luxury goods, oil, diesel and cars.

President Jiang Zemin ordered an intensive crackdown on smuggling into China in mid-1998 in a bid to raise import duty revenues and root out corruption.

Since then, official imports statistics have risen rapidly as more trade has been forced through formal, monitored channels.

Economists estimate that at least some of the 35.8 percent increase in imports last year were accounted for by the anti-smuggling campaign.

(China Daily 01/14/2001)