The group, mostly men from Fujian province, were repatriated on a China-chartered flight from Nagasaki, China Daily said.

Border guards from the provincial capital, Fuzhou, said the stowaways would be questioned and probably penalised, the paper said.

The repatriation was the first from Japan this year, said Xinhua.

On January 8, the United States sent home 246 stowaways to the province in a bid to stem the flow of people making the dangerous journey to the West.

The stowaways had arrived in Japan in different groups and were caught by Japanese police. They had been detained in Japan for three to nine months before being sent back to China, the news agency said.

Most of the stowaways to Japan came from the ports of Fuqing and Changle. They ranged in age from 17 to 35. All but 57 were men.

It was unclear whether they had left the mainland by hiding inside soft-top cargo containers aboard ocean-going ships, the latest method used by smugglers.

A Fuzhou border patrol official was quoted by Xinhua as saying the group of stowaways would be held at the Fuzhou City No 2 Detention Centre pending investigation.

They would be prosecuted for illegally crossing the border, the official said.

In the past few weeks, several groups of mainland stowaways have been found on board container vessels arriving on the west coast of the United States and Canada, principally Washington state or British Columbia.

Recently, three stowaways were found dead inside one of the containers, which had been loaded on to a ship in Hong Kong.

Officials in the US are planning to launch a publicity campaign on the mainland to discourage people from taking the risk.

Send this article
to a friend