This year, the General Administration of Customs has organized the ’Blue Sky 2018‘ campaign to combat the inward smuggling of ’foreign wastes’, with focus on the solid wastes banned by the state from import. Till February 27, all Customs nationwide seized totally 69 cases of such inward smuggling, involving more than 50,000 tons of wastes.

From March 29 to April 2, the General Administration of Customs organized the second round of the 'Blue Sky 2018' campaign. During the period, all Customs filed a total of 34 criminal cases, destroyed 25 rings smuggling  solid wastes, and seized 52 criminal suspects and 111,000 tons of smuggled solid wastes, including 64,700 tons of waste slag that are banned from import.

This campaign covers 14 Customs Districts including Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao, Changsha, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Gongbei, Huangpu, Nanning and Haikou. Through the anti-smuggling operations, it was discovered that the smugglers falsely declared waste slag as raw mineral materials during importation; in addition, a small number of qualified importers and manufacturers illegally resold the import license of solid wastes, causing the imported wastes to be directly supplied to small workshops and distribution centers that are below environmental standards.

Eco-environmental protection has been repeatedly mentioned in this year's government work report, accordingly , China Customs will make much more efforts to crack down on 'foreign wastes' smuggling. For a long term, customs control and supervision will be intensive on the importation of primary scraps or processed granules.