China’s Expanding Illicit Drug Networks Raise Challenges for US Policy

An officer from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Trade and Cargo Division finds Oxycodone pills in a parcel at John F. Kennedy Airport's U.S. Postal Service facility in New York on June 24, 2019. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden signed a proclamation in August commemorating Overdose Awareness Week, a solemn moment for a nation that has witnessed more than half a million deaths from drug overdose in the last decade.

The president hailed his administration’s “re-launch of counternarcotics cooperation” with communist China as a vital tool in combating the flow of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the United States.

It was partly this cooperation on counternarcotics that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan then traveled to China to support.

For three days, Sullivan met with top officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), before telling reporters in Beijing that the administration is dedicated to getting Chinese assistance over synthetic opioids.

“We’re going to look for further progress on counternarcotics and reducing the flow of illicit synthetic drugs into the United States,” Sullivan said on Aug. 29.

As Sullivan was preparing to leave Beijing, however, another senior Biden administration official was delivering a different message 5,000 miles to the southeast.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was in the island nation of Vanuatu, promising locals that the United States would crack down on the growing networks of Chinese drug traffickers.

Those networks, he said, were positioning themselves to increase the flow of fentanyl into the United States and elsewhere by expanding new shipping lanes throughout the Indo-Pacific.

“We are concerned some of the networks that have grown in China and South East Asia are beginning to use the Pacific for transshipment both to Latin America and the United States,” he said.

Campbell reassured those present that the United States would work with foreign nations to rein in drug trafficking by criminal networks from China. But his admission of a growing Chinese drug trade raises questions as to the efficacy of the Biden administration’s counternarcotics engagements with China.

Tackling Chinese Drug Flows

It is between these two priorities, managing diplomatic relations with China’s authoritarian regime and putting an end to the United States’s opioid crisis, that U.S. government officials now frequently find themselves.

A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the administration “remains concerned” about transnational criminal activity in the Indo-Pacific, and is working closely with “robust” assistance to regional partners on the issue.

“These transnational criminal groups, by definition, are global in nature and so must be our response,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that the administration’s diplomatic efforts had “driven positive steps” by the CCP to counter the flow of precursor chemicals used in the production of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.

Those diplomatic efforts consisted of two meetings of the Counternarcotics Working Group with China, a joint effort designed “to disrupt the manufacture and flow of illicit synthetic drugs.” They were unveiled after President Joe Biden met CCP leader Xi Jinping in California last year.

U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell speaks during a news conference at the South Korean Presidential Office in Seoul on July 18, 2023. Kim Hong-ji/ Pool/AFP via Getty Images

An Aug. 1 meeting of the working group succeeded in convincing China to schedule seven chemicals, including three fentanyl precursors, as controlled substances—a move the White House described as “an important step in the right direction.”

What remains unclear is whether these legalistic successes will result in any decrease in the amount of Chinese drugs that are currently flooding the United States and other nations.

The State Department spokesperson said that China-based companies remained “the largest source of precursor chemicals used to manufacture illicit fentanyl that affects the United States.”

Seized fentanyl pills after the arrest of three distributors from Sinaloa, Mexico. U.S. Attorney's Office

Beyond scheduling drugs, the spokesperson noted that Chinese authorities arrested one individual earlier this year in relation to U.S. charges brought in 2023.

It remains the only known arrest made by China as a result of the bilateral counternarcotics coordination with the United States.

The lack of concrete deliverables from bilateral cooperation has raised concerns among some security experts that the CCP is merely making changes on paper which will not lead to any increased enforcement of drug trafficking laws.

In an analysis of the issue published in late August, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank described China’s move to schedule chemicals as “a public-relations stunt to save face and obfuscate the party’s complicity in this deadly problem.”

The researchers added that the CCP did not simply appear to ignore the export of illegal drugs from China but supported it.

“In leaked documents, companies [that sold fentanyl] boasted that the CCP owned them and that their illicit products were tax-exempt,” the researchers said.

Fentanyl by the Numbers

More than 75,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdose last year, according to official U.S. data. At the same time, U.S. law enforcement seized more than 115 million fentanyl pills throughout 2023, according to a press release by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

That’s more than 10 times the amount seized in 2021, and nearly 400 times the amount seized in 2018.

It’s too early to say if that trend will continue through 2024, but initial counts do not suggest the outlook is any less grim.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized 4,600 pounds of fentanyl powder and 34.5 million fentanyl pills in 2024 alone, according to the department’s website. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has seized more than 27,000 pounds of fentanyl, according to a fact sheet.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller said in an interview with the agency’s in-house media in May that “100 percent pure fentanyl coming directly from China” was the primary threat facing the United States from 2014–2018.

After the United States convinced China to schedule fentanyl as a class of drugs in 2019, however, the flow of the drug shifted from direct exports from China and began to be smuggled into the United States via Mexican cartels using Chinese precursor chemicals.

Whether the Chinese drug companies’ transition to the Indo-Pacific marks a similar shift in strategy remains an open question, but the role of Chinese traffickers and money launderers in cartel business is growing.

Confiscated drugs piled up in a truck bed. U.S. District Attorney via AP

In July, the DOJ charged a Chinese national with importing more than two tons of fentanyl precursors from China. That same month, the Treasury Department sanctioned two China-based members of a money laundering organization with links to the Sinaloa Cartel.

Neither bust was announced to have been made in coordination with Chinese authorities.

Likewise, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 24,000 Chinese nationals illegally entering the United States in fiscal year 2023, a significant jump from the fewer than 2,000 apprehended in fiscal 2022. An additional 28,500 Chinese nationals attempted to enter at ports of entry without legal papers in fiscal 2023.

When asked whether cooperation with China had resulted in a tangible decrease in fentanyl coming over the border, a DHS spokesperson directed The Epoch Times to Sullivan’s remarks in China.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not return a request for comment on the issue.

Republicans Question the US Approach

In congressional foreign policy circles, frustration with the administration’s continued efforts to cater to the CCP on counternarcotics is growing, especially among Republicans.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who serves as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Biden administration is ceding ground to the CCP on key issues in order to engage the regime “for fruitless talks with an untrustworthy regime” on counternarcotics.

McCaul told The Epoch Times that a prime example included the administration’s decision to remove the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science from a trade blacklist in exchange for establishing the Counternarcotics Working Group.

The Institute plays a vital role in the CCP’s genetic surveillance of China’s predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority through mass DNA collection and sequencing.

“Unsurprisingly, those conversations resulted in no demonstrable reduction in CCP shipments of fentanyl precursors to other countries,” McCaul said.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 29, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Similar concerns about the efficacy of the administration’s cooperation with China on counternarcotics have also been raised by the influential House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP.

A spokesperson for the Select Committee’s Republican majority told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s moves to schedule fentanyl precursors were the regime’s “latest vacuous promise,” designed to win concessions from the United States.

“The horror will not end until the U.S. makes clear to the PRC government and companies responsible that they will pay a price for their actions,” the spokesperson said, using an acronym for the official name of China, the People’s Republic of China.

The spokesperson said that China is “subsidizing the export of fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and fentanyl precursors” and not taking any “enforcement action against the PRC perpetrators responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths.”

A bipartisan report published by the Select Committee earlier in the year, found that the CCP subsidized the manufacture of opioids by offering tax subsidies and grants to companies engaged in the creation and export of such drugs to the Americas even though the drugs are technically illegal in China.

The Select Committee’s report also found that the CCP has ownership stakes in some of the companies exporting fentanyl precursors.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who serves on the Select Committee, told The Epoch Times that the committee had its own Fentanyl Working Group, which recommended “strict trade and customs enforcement measures” to counter the flow of narcotics from China.

“China produces almost all of the fentanyl that comes across America’s borders,” Johnson said.

“I’m not sure how the president expects China to cooperate with our requests to stop the fentanyl crisis when Chinese Communist Party-affiliated companies are the ones producing the drug.”

Democrat lawmakers have largely stopped short of critiquing the Biden administration’s counternarcotics push with China.

The Epoch Times requested comment from five leading Democrats associated with the Select Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including ranking members Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.).

None responded as to whether they believed the Counternarcotics Working Group was effective.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, tied the issue to other Biden administration policies and told The Epoch Times that the opioid crisis would likely continue until the ongoing border crisis was resolved.

“Lives are at stake, and we must act to mitigate the ongoing harm and pain this deadly substance is causing American families,” McClain said.

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), whose state has consistently ranked the highest in the nation for lethal overdoses per capita, said that China’s communist regime was largely to blame.

“West Virginia has been hit hard by the drug epidemic and a lot of the poison on our streets can be directly traced back to Mexican drug cartels using fentanyl materials from China,” Mooney told The Epoch Times.

Mooney said that Congress should pass legislation to deny U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance to nations such as Mexico and China until they can be certified as having effectively worked with the United States to lower the production and trafficking of fentanyl.

He said if that doesn’t happen, those countries had no right to American assistance.

The White House did not return a request for comment.