The black market for chips in China has been booming since the US imposed severe sanctions and the resulting bottlenecks. Because there is a lot of money to be made with chips from abroad, there is a lot of smuggling. Now a rather curious case has come to light.
The ongoing US economic sanctions against China have a very far-reaching effect on companies – after all, they are also sanctioned by the United States if they trade certain products here. China complicates the situation with high import duties. As a result, among other things, access to chip technology in the country is currently very limited, and the global chip crisis is exacerbating the situation. The result: Brisk trade in smuggled goods at exorbitant prices. As Bloomberg (via Futurezone ) reports, a woman has now been caught entering country who had probably promised big profits here.
Accordingly, an apparently pregnant woman was picked up when entering the Macau SAR. The officials noticed her because her statements about the progress of the pregnancy did not seem to fit her appearance. The woman said she was “five or six months” pregnant but had an “unusually large” belly, according to the report. During the subsequent investigation, 202 processors and 9 smartphones were found in a fake belly.
As Bloomberg explains in its report, even old chip generations are being traded at high prices in China at the moment, so profit margins of up to 500 times the original prices on the black market are not uncommon. In the case of smartphones, it is important that they are imported into special administrative zones with significantly lower customs duties. It is currently not known what the punishment for the woman with a fake stomach for electronics smuggling is now after the arrest.
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