It's not just the shipping costs, either. Apparently importing and exporting items in China is a hugely expensive bureaucratic pain: http://dangerousprototypes.

It's not just the shipping costs, either. Apparently importing and exporting items in China is a hugely expensive bureaucratic pain: http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2016/02/04/how-to-china-importexport-permit-and-company-bank/ http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2016/02/04/how-to-china-... "In practice, almost everyone doing production in China has some variant of a story where they smuggle chips into the country in a backpack, pants pocket, etc."