Local researchers believe that the increased reports of bedbugs in Beijing may have  something to do with them being entrained through luggage from the US as more Chinese people return home from the country.

For many years, the bedbugs disappeared from Beijing, but now, researchers are seeing them again in both urban and rural areas, said Zeng Xiaopeng, deputy head of Beijing Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention.

He said Monday that the city has seen about 20 cases of bedbugs biting some 60 people in the past year, with two new cases reported just last week. They are thought to have come from the US, although the ones in Beijing appear to be of a weaker strain, said Zeng.

"Compared with bedbugs in the US, the ones in Beijing are more sensitive to insecticides," he said, adding that researchers are studying whether a mutation occurred with the bugs and affected their drug resistance.

Beijing Times