Anything over 2000RMB that will stay in China needs to be declared.
http://shanghai.customs.gov.cn/Default.aspx?tabid=5674

Two boxed units/person seems to be the de facto tolerance, at least in Shenzhen. Customs at Shenzhen Bay has been extremely slow this week because of the iPhone 6, but they aren't messing with small the two-unit crowd.

I never got anything confiscated (over land from HK and Macau) In the few cases I got checked I had to decide whether to pay the duty or carry it back.
They do keep records though and know exactly about any past incident.

In my experience large baggage *always* goes through the xray when taking the land border crossings from HK into China. But flying into Pudong or BJ airports - never once have I been asked to xray my bags.

One x-ray in Shanghai, I don't recall if it was PuDong or not.

There were special circumstances involved, though--in the eyes of the customs official I was wheeling out more luggage than normal which caught his eye. Then the fact that my entry stamp was two days earlier drew more attention.

At that point my wife caught up (I had finally started walking to get her to quit talking to the baggage people forever) and explained that the airline left our bags behind, we were just picking them up now. (She's a native speaker, I speak a couple of dozen words with a bad enough accent that people likely won't understand me so I left the explanation to her.) End of inspection.

Usually they don't look no matter what. There's a nuke alarm there, my wife tripped it and nobody responded. After waiting a bit to see if anyone was going to give us directions we finally went on out. (While there was a second detector that actually was manned it's before the formalities and thus doesn't scan your checked baggage. Even there they didn't do the elementary test of separating her from her carry-ons and sweeping a geiger counter over her to see if the source was dispersed {leftover from medical imaging} or a point source. They simply accepted her word that it was from a heart scan despite having left the card from the lab behind.)

there are x-rays at PVG which are used from time to time.

Sometimes it is just used for individuals, sometimes everyone has to go through them (the latter is rare).

I think last time we were subjected to 'everyone' they were looking for baby formula.

But they are cracking down on iPhones: http://www.ecns.cn/2014/09-25/136058.shtml

That has always been the case.

Crack down on inbound smuggling until the availability in China is normal.

There are a lot of Asian wealth from arbitraging price differential with anything and everything.

I guess if you can repatriate refugees, currency, human remains, cultural items, battlefield caualties.. you can surely repatriate an iPhone.

Not trying to be funny but with family roots spanning HK, Chinese Village and North of the Bay area we did bones shipment from US to China during the late Qing dynasty (19th century).

That definately fits the definition of returning to the country of origin.

The joke among Chinese migrant worker in US during the 19th century was "The only way they let you stay is if you die". It was also the wish of all that they be buried at ancestry site back in China

They were buried in US for seven years. After that the bones were exhumed, boxed and shipped back to relatives in China via HK.

Hope you understand.

H. RES. 683

That the House of Representatives regrets the passage of legislation that adversely affected people of Chinese origin in the United States because of their ethnicity.

Nothing in this resolution may be construed or relied on to authorize or support any claim, including but not limited to constitutionally based claims, claims for monetary compensation or claims for equitable relief against the United States or any other party, or serve as a settlement of any claim against the United States.

No hard feelings