NANJING, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Fu Xiaoshuai (pseudonym), 17, said he never felt more remorseful than when he was detained by police in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, for drug smuggling.

"I vomited when I swallowed the 56th pill," he recalled. Fu had used his body as a container and swallowed 60 fingernail-sized pills of heroin, which weighed more than 300 grams.

The newcomer of this illegal business was arrested with other three young traffickers by Nanjing railway police in a drug trafficking crime solved in February this year, in which a total of 1.27 kg of heroin were confiscated.

Fu more or less ruined his future by smuggling drugs as Chinese criminal law strictly punishes such behavior.

According to the law, smuggling, trafficking, transporting or making 50 grams of heroin or more is punishable by 15 years in jail, life imprisonment or the death penalty.

In transporting illegal drugs, a criminal suspect like Fu was called a mule, a person who smuggles drugs across a border for a smuggling organization by hiding the goods in carried items, attaching them to one's body or using the body as a container.

Hu Fengyang, an officer with Nanjing railway police, said these mules were often young, underprivileged and gullible enough to believe drug trafficking could bring them quick money.

Questioned by police, Fu admitted he was lured by the easy money from trafficking drugs along the China-Myanmar border. "I am such a fool to believe that I could earn 10,000 yuan (around 1,456 U.S. dollars) each time," he confessed, blinking back tears.

Police in Jiangsu had solved 17 cases of drug trafficking through human bodies from 2016 to 2018, indicating a rising trend of similar crimes, said Zhu Jun, an officer with the local narcotics division, ahead of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which is observed on June 26 annually.

"At the China-Myanmar border, many are illegally transporting drugs every day, and it has actually become an industrial chain," said a criminal suspect surnamed Ding who claimed he had worked at a casino in Myanmar and contacted over 100 drug mules.

A report published by the China National Narcotics Control Commission on June 17 noted that organized criminal gangs used high returns as bait to recruit and intimidate young people to transport drugs from overseas and finally manipulated most of the domestic heroin market.

There were more foreigners entering China with illicit drugs, with 1,268 foreign drug traffickers caught in 2018, according to the report.

The Chinese government has gone to all lengths to fight the uphill battle against drugs. Confronting the difficulties caused by online drug sales and package deliveries, the country's narcotics squads have launched a number of targeted crackdowns on smuggling.

China seized 67.9 tonnes of drugs in 109,600 drug-related cases last year, arresting a total of 137,400 suspects, the report said.