Quarantine border haul higher

China's quarantine authority intercepted 681,900 batches of prohibited articles and prevented them from being carried or mailed into the country in 2017, a haul 16 percent higher than the previous year.

The authority discovered a total of 85,300 batches of potentially harmful items - up 7 percent compared with 2016 - including fresh fruits, seeds and bird nests, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine reported on Tuesday.

Mediterranean fruit flies, dangerous pests nicknamed "fruit killers", were among the harmful species found in 2017.