What Chinese Court Cases Reveal about Rhino Horn Trafficking

China has long been recognised as a major destination for trafficked rhino horn. Although the trade is largely illegal, demand continues to drive poaching across Africa and parts of Asia.

By analyzing court verdicts, EIA’s new report, Routed Through the Courts, sheds light on the routes, methods, and networks involved in supplying rhino horn to Chinese consumers and China’s criminal justice response to rhino horn trafficking.

EIA reviewed 258 rhino horn trafficking cases published on China Judgements Online (CJO), a public database of court verdicts, to produce the findings contained in the report. Spanning 2013 to October 2025, the cases provide one of the clearest pictures yet of how rhino horn enters China and makes its way to buyers throughout the country.

Rhino horn was exported primarily from southern Africa, particularly South Africa and Mozambique. Earlier trafficking patterns, mainly in cases before 2019, often involved larger shipments transported directly from Africa by air, sometimes transiting through Hong Kong, before arriving at major Chinese airports. 

Since then, the pattern reflected in court verdicts indicates a shift toward overland smuggling across China’s southern border. Vietnam and Myanmar appear frequently as transit countries, with seizures linked to border crossings into the Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan. Once inside China, rhino horn moves through domestic networks linking border regions with markets across the country, often via the use of courier services.

Most cases involved small-to-medium quantities of horn weighing less than 10 kg. The majority of seized items were already worked, partially or completely, into products such as beads, pendants, carvings, and fragments rather than whole horns. Smaller pieces and powder are easier to conceal and transport, allowing traffickers to move horn through courier services or by trusted transporters. However, 13 cases involved consignments exceeding 10 kg, which together account for the majority of the approximately 700 kg of rhino horn recorded in the dataset.

Rhino horn rarely appeared alone. In nearly three quarters of the cases analysed, authorities seized other wildlife products alongside it, most commonly African elephant ivory, pangolin scales, helmeted hornbill casques, and lion parts.

Across the cases examined, prison sentences averaged around four and a half years and fines averaged roughly RMB 92,000 (USD 13,000), with suspended sentences applied in just over a third of cases. Some verdicts also revealed links between rhino horn trafficking and corruption, including instances in which rhino horn was gifted as a form of bribery to government officials.

CJO provides valuable insight into wildlife trafficking cases that might otherwise receive little public attention. However, the number of judgements uploaded to the database has declined sharply since 2020 and plans have been announced to replace it with a more restricted system accessible only to legal professionals.

Taken together, the cases analysed in Routed Through the Courts highlight the complex networks linking African source countries, Southeast Asian transit hubs, and consumer markets across China. Strengthening enforcement along key border routes, improving international cooperation, and maintaining transparency in wildlife crime prosecutions will all be critical to disrupting these trafficking networks and reducing pressure on the world’s remaining rhinos.