The discovery of the bodies of 58 Chinese people in a container truck at Dover highlights the increasing use of overland routes by Chinese emigrants to reach the West.
Many Chinese now first enter Russia, either illegally or as tourists, and make their way to Moscow and St Petersburg before trying to reach EU borders. Russian officials say that 80 per cent of illegal immigrants enter across the ill-defined frontier between Russia and Kazakhstan.
Other Chinese cross the Russian-Chinese frontier in the Far East, where Russian border guards have deported several thousand back to China in the last two years. Russia and China allow visa-free tourist visits under consular agreements signed in 1992 and 1993.
The major influx of illegal immigrants to Russia came from China, Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, an 11-nation conference of Baltic region countries meeting in Karlskruna, Sweden, was told last year. Experts estimated the number in Russia at between 500,000 and 1.5 million.
Moscow is increasingly worried about the influx of illegal immigrants from China, the then deputy interior minister, Mr Valery Fyodorov, said at the time. He said 500,000 Chinese visited Russia each year legally but that many stayed on illegally or tried to reach western Europe.
Many Chinese also try to enter EU countries via the Balkans. On January 7th, Slovene border police arrested 10 Chinese who illegally crossed from Croatia; 40 on January 23rd; and on January 25th, a further six.
On May 23rd 17 Chinese border violators were caught crossing from Yugoslavia into Hungary. Chinese emigrants are able to obtain high-quality forged documents from criminal gangs of "snakeheads" in China who organise people-smuggling.
These are mostly based in the southern province of Fujian, which has a population of 26 million and a strong tradition of emigration. The problem for bona fide students and business executives from Fujian province is that the forging of documents there has become so prevalent that some embassies in Beijing refuse to issue visas to anyone with Fujian diplomas and other certificates of validity.
Forged documents keep turning up when illegal Chinese emigrants are apprehended in Europe. On June 12th last year 19 Chinese "tourists" holding railway tickets from Moscow to Warsaw were discovered by Russian police to have counterfeit visas and stamps of entry to Russia. Last October, Estonian border guards detained 16 Chinese with counterfeit South Korean passports trying to enter from Russia on a tour bus.
The "snakeheads" have operated out of Fujian province for centuries and today control a sophisticated and often cruel global operation. Chinese emigrants pay up to $50,000 for travel documents and transportation. Those who borrow the money from "snakeheads" find that when they reach their destination they have to work in slave-like conditions in sweatshops owned by Chinese businesses, or sometimes as prostitutes, in order to repay the loan.
More than 100,000 people are reportedly smuggled out of China each year by these gangs. Under pressure from countries such as Canada, which received 600 illegal immigrants from Fujian province last year, China is stepping up its battle against trafficking. In April, security police announced that 171 gangsters had been detained so far this year.