They are demanding better equipment, including highspeed planes and boats and unspecified weapons, to deal with the "snakeheads" who organise the trade.

The Fujian's border guards complain that their anti-smugging equipment is comparatively backward and in some places they have to conduct patrols in rented fishing boats.

The Fujian authorities say the penalties prescribed by existing laws are too light and do not adequately deter persistent offenders.

But allegations of collusion between local officials and the snakeheads have now been published in the Chinese press.

A news clampdown was imposed in the province for more than a week after word of the deaths reached China.

The national media reported the investigation in Britain but carried almost no information from Fujian. At the end of last week the Fujian press finally reported that a large-scale operation against the smuggling was launched on June 20, the day after news of the Dover tragedy broke.

Several Chinese newspapers, including the Southern Weekend and the China Youth Daily, both known for investigative journalism, have been allowed to publish interviews with the families and local security officials.

The identity of the main snakehead gang leaders is common knowledge in the districts of Changle and Fuqing and other centres of illegal emigration.

The Southern Weekend reporter, who pretended to be a would-be migrant during his investigation, was given the names of several snakeheads and officials.

"There are plenty of people who can help you," he was told in one village.

"If you want to go to Japan in a hurry you can look for Chen Meng X - he's a township official." The newspaper did not publish the official's full name.

The reporter was also given the name of a village Communist party secretary involved in the trade.

"It is fairly well known that the provincial authorities and the snakeheads have very good links," a western diplomat said yesterday.

"It is the usual problem that while cooperation can be secured at the national level, progress really depends on winning support and consent locally."

Some foreign reporters in China who tried to visit the snakehead areas in Fujian were detained and told to leave the province.

The provincial authorities have said that they are too busy to accept journalists from abroad.

Fujian officials rely heavily on the long history of emigration from the province to explain why the traffic is so difficult to stop.

They also blame foreign countries for lax controls and for allowing some illegal migrants to gain political asylum.

A border guard spokesman suggested that the province should organise proper routes for legal migration so that people could come and go safely.

A sizeable number of Fujian migrants already leave China with travel documents that are completely in order.

Foreign experts monitoring the movement of migrants are accustomed to the sight of parties of Fujianese heading for central Europe or the Caribbean with valid tourist visas.

The families of the migrants say that Chinese passports and third-country visas are supplied by the snakeheads or their contacts in return for payment.

The Fujian authorities have not said how they intend to deal with this problem, in spite of a succession of campaigns against smuggling.

The border guard chief, Colonel Wu Jiansen, has been quoted as saying that a full-scale campaign against the snakeheads was launched in April and was still under way when the new drive was started on June 20.