Marine police in Hong Kong said Sunday they seized computer hard disks worth more than 250,000 US dollars that were being loaded onto speedboats ready to be smuggled to China, dpa reported.
Officers swooped when they saw goods being loaded from a lorry onto two speedboats in Hong Kong's eastern New Territories close to the border with China on Saturday evening.
The smugglers jumped into the speedboats and fled and police found 96 boxes of computer hard disks worth 2 million Hong Kong dollars (256,000 US dollars), a marine police spokesman said.
Smuggling of people and goods of all descriptions by speed boat between Hong Kong and China is common in the rural New Territories area north of the Kowloon peninsula.
Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 after 156 years as a British colony but maintains a separate economic system and strict border controls with neighboring southern China.