European forbidding smuggling article from China? (7)
I believe the answer is:
eastern
'from china?' is the definition.
(China is a country of the east)
'european forbidding smuggling article' is the wordplay.
'european' becomes 'E' (abbreviation e.g. EU).
'forbidding' becomes 'stern' (synonyms).
'smuggling' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters smuggled inside).
'article' becomes 'a' (the indefinite article in English).
'e'+'stern'='estern'
'estern' enclosing 'a' is 'EASTERN'.
(Other definitions for eastern that I've seen before include "Asian" , "China?" , "Possibly Japanese" , "towards the sun" , "Earnest (anag.)" .)