Ada Shen is a film producer in China who has experienced the difficulties of getting audiovisual materials in and out of China by non-electronic means. She emailed Danwei to propose the following dilemma, related to the American congressional hearings about Google et al. in China:

Should the new laws extend to mail companies like Fedex, DHL and UPS?

By Chinese law, they have to check incoming and outgoing packages for the content of media like videotapes and CDs. They don't play them, necessarily, but will hold up your shipment until you verify via a written statement that the contents do not harm the PRC blah blah.

Sounds like censorship to me! Tampering with the mail in the US is a federal offence...

UPDATE: This response comes from reader Sascha Matuszak:

For a brief period last year -- till November maybe, UPS was actually a Chinese company with the license (Yue Zhong) to use the UPS logo and such here in Chengdu -- at that time, "censorship" was lax and most anything made its way through -- convenient considering DHL's earlier entry into the market. DHL, almost from the beginning, has sent all packages through a strict customs search -- packages were siezed, returned, opened, employees were eager to check the contents of any and all packages ...

Now I don't have any experience with video, but I can say that UPS and
DHL would rather obey Chinese customs laws than not -- or better said
perhaps, the Chinese customs obey the laws of the land when dealing
with these companies.

And I guess that includes customs opening up packages and rummaging around.

Personally, I use China Post Air for my stuff.