Beijing Exit and Entry Inspection Bureau cracked down on 600 illegal entry and exit cases at the Capital International Airport during the first half of the year.

The number of passengers that legally entered or left the capital dropped nearly 35 percent compared to the number for the same period of last year, as a result of the impact of the SARS outbreak during the past six months.

However, the number of illegal entry and exit passengers increased by 31 percent compared to figures for the same period last year, the China News Service reported Tuesday.

About 150 mainland passengers were found passing through the airport with both real and forged passports. Some of them hid their forged passports inside the covers of calculators or in vacuum flasks.

The bureau also found that some Chinese citizens went abroad and acquired forged passports of foreign countries, and then used them to enter other foreign countries.

The bureau also cracked down on nearly 100 foreign passengers who used the Beijing airport as a springboard to stow away to other countries. They mainly came from western Asia, the Middle East, Africa and some countries neighboring China.

In March this year, for example, the bureau found seven forged Hong Kong passports and one forged Taiwan passport in the luggage of a passenger surnamed Tan, who came from Southeast Asia, when the person was going to take flight MS869.

Tan was trying to take seven passengers from East China's Zhejiang and Fujian provinces to Cairo via Beijing, and then stow them away on the flight to Europe via Cairo.

(China Daily July 30, 2003)