Guangdong is introducing legislation to combat rampant smuggling in the southern province, which reports more than half of the country's smuggling cases each year.

Last year, the province uncovered more than 7,800 smuggling cases involving about 7.7 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion).

The new anti-smuggling regulation, the country's first at the provincial level, will help law enforcement officials combat smuggling in a more standardized manner, Sun Xiaohe, deputy director of the provincial anti-smuggling office, told a press conference in Guangzhou on Tuesday. It will come into effect next month.

China does not have a national anti-smuggling law. Instead, efforts to combat smuggling involve more than 20 government departments, such as public security, transportation, environmental protection and industrial and commercial departments, he said.

"With a lack of detailed stipulations and specific provisions, these departments' duties to combat smuggling are not clear and their jurisdictions often overlap each another," Sun said.

Guangdong, which is adjacent to the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and is one of China's most prosperous provinces, has nearly 3,400 km of coastline, causing difficulties for coast guard surveillance.

Local governments in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai have already formulated their own city-level smuggling regulations and the experience gained through those laws has been used in formulating the provincial one.

The new regulation outlines departmental duties, an anti-smuggling assessment and accountability system, whistleblower rewards and protection, as well as grassroots participation.

Officials will face disciplinary or even criminal sanctions if they fail the assessment, reveal a whistleblower's information, abuse powers, neglect duties, practice favoritism or engage in fraud.

They will also be punished if rampant smuggling activities are found in their jurisdictions.

Enterprises or people who sell imported cargo or goods that have not gone through customs procedures will be fined up to 30,000 yuan.

"The amount of the fine is relatively low because it's the amount the province-level regulation is allowed to impose," said Deng Ka, deputy chief of the secretariat of the provincial anti-smuggling office.

Violators will face a heavier fine if the regulation is upgraded to a higher level in the future, he said.

In the first quarter of this year, provincial customs uncovered 48 drug trafficking cases and confiscated about 91 kilograms of drugs, up 22 percent from the same period last year.