Chinese police, working with their Vietnamese counterparts, said on Wednesday that they had detained five suspected drug dealers, four of them Vietnamese, and seized 18.2 kilograms of heroin in their latest crackdown in border areas.

The drug trade remains rampant in China's border areas despite enhanced supervision and the problem is especially pervasive in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region which borders Vietnam. It has become one of the main channels for drug trafficking to and from China, second only to neighboring Yunnan Province.

"A lot of drugs from the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent areas flow to China via the border areas, while some new synthetic drugs are trafficked from China to Vietnam," said Qiu Yucheng, deputy head of Guangxi's anti-drug division.

Earlier this year, police in Guangxi's Pingxiang were tipped off about Vietnamese trying to transport drugs to China via seafood.

"We found that a seafood transfer station in Pingxiang often took live seafood from Vietnam," said Luo Shenghui, head of the city's anti-drug division. "The station's seafood was frequently transported to neighboring Guangdong Province, which is one of the major areas for heroin sales."

On August 29, local police learned that several Vietnamese had brought a consignment of eels into China.

One officer disguised himself as a driver and helped transport the eels from the transfer station to a seafood market in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province. There, police detained two Vietnamese women and a Guangxi woman who had been waiting for the eels. Among the eels, police found bags of heroin weighing 13.3 kilograms.

Guangxi police contacted their Vietnamese counterparts via a "border contact mechanism" established in 2012 and, on September 1, five Vietnamese officers arrived to take part in the investigation. Based on the women's confessions, police seized dealers in Vietnam.

After China stepped up efforts to control drug trafficking in Yunnan, Guangxi, which has many loosely supervised routes between China and Vietnam, has become a magnet for smugglers. Official statistics reveal that in 2010, 2011 and 2012, Guangxi police nabbed illegal substances weighing 181, 212 and 421 kilograms respectively in the border area.

"We have not only found drug trafficking, but also gun and human trafficking," Qiu said.

Border cities or counties including Dongxing, Pingxiang, Ningming and Daxin face particularly serious drug problems. Guangxi's border police said the locations usually act as a "transfer stop" for drugs sourced from Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle."

However, Chinese and Vietnamese police have been exchanging information and launching joint investigations since the "border contact mechanism" was established.

In July, the anti-drug department of China's Ministry of Public Security signed a cooperation memorandum with its Vietnamese counterpart to launch their third joint border crackdown from September to December.

By October 10, the crackdown had resulted in 1,036 suspects caught in 842 cases across 18 provinces, cities and regions in China. Of the suspects, 11 are Vietnamese nationals and two foreign nationals.

Though the cooperation mechanism has had good results, challenges remain.

Qiu said drug traders had taken to hiding drugs in fruit, seafood and other commodities, making discovery difficult.

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