Nintendo Switch, Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles vanish from Chinese e-commerce platforms amid smuggling crackdown
- Online and offline vendors have closed or removed listings for many imported consoles and games amid a new smuggling crackdown this week
- Chinese gamers have long turned to the grey market hardware to buy censored games or new consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X
Video games and consoles – including Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and the Nintendo Switch – have been vanishing from online and offline stores in China this week after dozens of arrests resulting from a fresh crackdown on smuggling, which has long been a popular method of playing games not officially for sale in the country.
The Public Security Department of Guangdong Province said on Monday that it had arrested 54 parallel importers and seized 78 million yuan (US$11.9 million) worth of allegedly smuggled game consoles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, according to the National Anti-Smuggling Bureau’s official Weibo account on Friday.
The post said the total value of goods smuggled by the suspects since 2018 was 3.38 billion yuan, amounting to 389 million yuan in alleged tax evasion.
“This is a special operation targeting the smuggling of overseas versions of game consoles, and the case value is significant,” said Wu Guoxiong, director of Shenzhen-based Guanghe Law Firm’s customs law committee. “There have been occasional cases of smuggling game consoles by parallel importers in recent years, but relatively small.”
Tax evasion will be an important factor in penalising console smugglers, with those who evaded more than 2.5 million yuan in taxes possibly facing a minimum of 10 years in prison, Wu added.
