THE price of computer parts in Beijing's Zhongguancun area, a bustling commercial district dominated by shops selling computer equipment, has climbed as President Jiang Zemin's drive to separate the PLA from business begins to bite.
The cost of Pentium chips and memory boards has risen by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent as the squeeze tightens on the army's smuggling activities.
For example, Xiyuan military airport near Beijing's Summer Palace was a regular source of parts for the thriving computer assembly business in northwestern Beijing.
The flights generally originated from military airfields in coastal centres such as Qingdao port in Shandong. Now the supply has dried up because of the clampdown on the military's business activities, said one entrepreneur familiar with the industry. He said it was another reflection of Mr Jiang's step by step control over the PLA.
In Zhongguancun, the price of Pentium II chips has risen by 500 yuan (HK$468) to between 1,600 yuan and 1,800 yuan, while the price of a 32-megabyte memory board has increased by a third to about 300 yuan.
Sales are down slightly, say shop owners, but there is still plenty of business because cost increases are cushioned by using China-made monitors, keyboards and other parts unaffected by the smuggling crackdown.