Mou Xinsheng, director-general of the General Administration of Customs (GAC), made the remarks at the three-day national conference of customs directors, which opened in Beijing Tuesday.

Mou urged customs officials to raise more revenue from customs duties and import-related taxes, crack down on smuggling and improve supervision of goods and passengers in transit.

Besides improving the legal framework, the Chinese customs offices have taken measures to better handle cross-border goods and passengers, said Mou.

GAC statistics show Chinese customs cracked down on 55,755 smuggling cases involving a total of 43.04 billion yuan (US$5.20 billion) in the 1998-2002 period.

Despite tariff cuts after China's entry to the WTO, customs' net revenue from duties and import-related taxes reached a record high of 259.06 billion yuan (US$31.29 billion) last year.

(Edited by china.org.cn January 8, 2003)