Chinese smugglers build concrete tunnel under the border with Hong Kong to smuggle trade

Underground path had one end in a rented garage in Shenzhen
The other end was found in a thicket of reeds in Hong Kong

By Tara Brady
PUBLISHED: 14:24 GMT, 25 December 2013 | UPDATED: 15:09 GMT, 25 December 2013

Smugglers dug a 'professional' concrete tunnel into Hong Kong equipped with lights, vents, steel reinforcements and even rails to transport goods.
The underground path had 'one end in a rented garage in Shenzhen and another in a thicket of reeds in Hong Kong, totally concealed', said a report posted on the official website china.com.cn.
'It was dug in a totally professional way,' it said.

A tunnel which was built by smugglers near the border of Hong Kong, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong, along with Shenzhen in mainland China, are both important trade hubs for the fast-growing and massive market.
But the two have very different tariff systems.

The as-yet unidentified smugglers sought to exploit their proximity by building a 40-metre-long underground passage and installing a rail track and wagon with a block-and-tackle system to ferry goods such as cell phones and tablet computers.

The tunnel stood about 0.8 metres wide and one metre high, just big enough for an adult to crawl through.

A soldier checking an underground tunnel leading to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province

A soldier checking an underground tunnel built by smugglers between Hong Kong and China

Soldiers moving equipment out of an underground tunnel leading to Hong Kong from Shenzhen

It started from a remote area of Shenzhen, in a garage full of bags packed with sludge dug up from the tunnel, and ended in a cluster of tall reeds a few metres past a river dividing mainland China and Hong Kong, with the nearest village 20 metres away.
The project was estimated to have cost three million yuan ($490,000) and taken four months to build.
Border officers discovered the tunnel a week ago, and a nearby resident said she heard drilling noises for one or two nights but assumed they were for renovations.
The man who rented the garage had used a fake ID, authorities were quoted as saying.