Woman tries to smuggle 202 Intel CPUs hidden inside a fake pregnant belly

It’s explained in the article that this was probably an attempt to avoid paying import taxes to the Chinese government when crossing from Macau to the mainland.

I remember entering China from Mongolia in 2019, I don't recall any metal detectors (my memory could be fooling me), I do remember needing to register my eyes and fingerprints on a machine, so yeah, the regime has my biometric info.

One could take the train (the Trans-Mongolian that goes* between Moscow and Beijing) to cross the border, I think the passengers don't even have to deboard or go through any detectors. I wanted to save money, so I ended up with hundreds of Mongolian students who got off the train at the border, got onto buses which took them to the border checkpoint, off the buses and on foot along some dirt road to the big border crossing building, queued to cross the border (thankfully it was indoors), and then back onto the buses on the pristine parking lot on the Chinese side. The buses would then go all the way to the first big city where the train was going, but for less price.

* At least before Covid and the "special military operation"

Generally speaking, you walk through metal detectors to get on planes, not to enter countries.

I don't believe I've ever walked through a metal detector upon my arrival in a destination country in my life.