Hundreds of thousands of flights flow into Guangzhou's Baiyun International Airport every afternoon, which makes it the busiest time for customs officers.

Six seconds! That's the quickest time Chen Xuanzhi, a customs officer, has ever taken to tell whether a traveler was carrying drugs or not. 

"I can make judgments by observing a visitor's appearance... for example his clothes, his eyes and his movements. After that, I will find some 'suspicious' personnel," said Chen.

Some days ago, a passenger was stopped by Chen and his colleagues after he passed through the X-ray machine. The inspectors thought that the passenger might have hidden drugs in his body. The X-ray machine showed multiple shadows around his stomach.

Customs officers decided to detained him and took him to a hospital. The suspect admitted to swallowing dozens of pills wrapped in heroin three days ago under the instructions of others who asked him to take the drugs into China.

From Chen's experience, using the human body to traffic drugs is not the most secretive way. During several anti-drugs operations, Chen has seen drugs hidden in hair, woven into carpets and even dissolved in food items.

In 2018 alone, the Biyun Airport customs disclosed 713 illegal cases, including 43 drug-related cases, seizing over a 100 kilograms of drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine.

"The fact that we are able to seize so many drugs every year is actually an accumulation of every inspector's working experience. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation. So our new colleagues could get the skills of reconnaissance and make the judgments very quickly," Chen told China Central Television Network (CCTV).

Guangzhou's International Mail Exchange Bureau is another front line in the fight against drug trafficking.

The bureau has 26 customs officers with an average age of less than 33 years old. These officers are responsible for the supervision of over 700,000 parcels a day.  Since the beginning of this year, they have tracked down 212 drug-related cases. 

They supervise the circulation of goods with the help of big data, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and intelligent equipment.

"In fact no matter how advanced the technology is, it will be of no use without the seriousness and responsibility of the staff…As long as we are on duty for one day, we will guard the country's gates, and we will fight against drug trafficking on the front lines," said Feng Jieping, deputy chief of the Postal Goods Supervision Department at Guangzhou International Mail Exchange Bureau.

(Source: CCTV.com)

(CGTN's You Yang and Wang Yushen also contributed to the story)