China's huge online shopping festival, Singles Day, is Wednesday, and authorities have found that the amount of contraband found in cross-border online shopping shipments to Beijing in October rose as much as three times from the previous month.

Internet companies have developed the day into an online shopping extravaganza by promoting products with discounts and other benefits. The hot shopping celebration also draws attention from the Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

The bureau checked 8,402 shipments that Chinese consumers purchased from foreign online sellers in Canada and the United States in October to find 53 contraband items - animal products and plant seeds - that violate Chinese law on cross-border shipments. It’s a number three times of that in September.

Zhang Jijun, director of the Mail Department of the Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, was quoted by Beijing Daily as saying that these items pose a serious threat to food security and agricultural production in the country.

Most of the 53 contraband items were products like dried sea cucumbers, items that the Ministry of Agriculture and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine have prohibited from entering China.