Hong Kong’s pro-Chinese government has declared Australian lobsters a security threat after discovering smugglers have thwarted Beijing’s ban on it.
Louise Ho, Hong Kong’s new Commissioner of Customs and Excise, said that customs should be on alert not only for firearms and ammunition but “also strategic commodities” such as Australian lobsters.
“We should also pay special attention to those products which may impose threats on national security,” she told a press conference on Thursday after learning that Hong Kong’s smugglers had circumvented Beijing’s efforts to punish Australia by ending its lobster exports to China.
The trade war, as part of China’s retaliation against Australia for perceived slights, began year ago.
An Australian study has since revealed that China’s lobster lovers have not gone without; exports of Australian lobster to Hong Kong have soared by 2,000 per cent — with smugglers spiriting most of it into neighbouring China.
The Hong Kong lobster smuggling gangs are getting the equivalent of £185 a kilogram from Chinese buyers — twice the price in Hong Kong.
Ho said she would crack down on the lobster smugglers who have allowed Australia to minimise the impact of Beijing’s retaliatory trade sanctions .
“On the face of it, it’s just a normal smuggling case, smuggling lobsters,” she said. “But actually these smuggling activities would undermine the country’s trade restrictions on Australia. Therefore, tackling lobster smuggling activities is an important task in safeguarding national security.”
Hong Kong customs officials arrested a seven-man lobster syndicate after they were found to have brought in 228 tonnes of lobsters valued at £16 million.
Research by James Laurenceson and Thomas Pantle at the University of Technology in Sydney has found that 97 per cent of the Australian lobster which used to go to China has been diverted to alternative markets, most of it to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s Australian lobster imports reached 1,126,534kg in June.
“While ‘grey markets’ have proven an effective risk mitigation mechanism for Australian lobster exporters to date, it remains to be seen whether PRC authorities will attempt to clamp down on this circuitous route,” Laurenceson and Pantle said.
Ho’s statements this week are the first official indication that the targeting of Australian lobsters was motivated by political considerations, not health or contamination fears as claimed by Beijing last October.
Thousands of tonnes of lobster were stranded at Chinese airports for enhanced Covid-19 screening. They were then banned over fears of elevated traces of minerals and metals, that the Australian lobster industry denied.
Beijing’s sudden blocking of Australian lobster followed tensions over Australia’s push for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, its criticism of Beijing on human rights and its clampdown on local political interference by China’s operatives.
