A US Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated pills containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York. Counternarcotics cooperation between the United States and China is expected to remain central to bilateral relations given the persistence of the fentanyl problem. Photo: AFP
Opinion
Zha Daojiong
Zha Daojiong
China-US cooperation on fentanyl shows value of putting politics aside
Counternarcotics efforts are an example of Washington and Beijing working together despite the persistent geopolitical tensions
Safeguarding public health in both countries is too important an aspect of bilateral relations to be treated in an ad hoc manner
The China-US counternarcotics working group met recently in Beijing, with planned follow-up meetings in Washington in the spring. The meeting was uneventful and is a sign of positive development in the two countries’ political relationship.
For these efforts to sustain their positive momentum, it is essential for both sides to work hard on depoliticising the group’s work down the road.
Critics could argue that even counternarcotics is inherently political in nature. After all, formal cooperation between the two country’s law enforcement and public health agencies suffered from a pause in the wake of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.
A year later, a bipartisan team of US lawmakers led by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer highlighted the necessity for resumption of talks on a visit to Beijing a year later. This paved the way for US President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping to announce an agreement when they met in San Francisco in November.
Such scepticism is only partially valid. The political relationship between the two countries has always been fraught with disputes in which neither side can back away from their respective stances. Still, counternarcotics has been an area of cooperation between the US and China since the 1980s, with success stories such as stemming the flow of illicit opium and heroin out of the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia and Afghanistan.
In recent years, the geography of the world’s illicit drug flows has changed to make China itself a source country. Central to the change is fentanyl and chemical precursors that can be turned into the final product, which is far deadlier than heroin.
Potent narcotic painkillers such as fentanyl are different from plant products of diverted pharmaceuticals in that they are totally synthetic drugs produced by clandestine laboratories. The first reports of fentanyl emerged in California in 1979 under the name “China White”. It later became one of the most notorious illicit drugs in the US in the mid-2010s.
Following former president Donald Trump raising the issue on his trip to Beijing in November 2017, China put all variants of fentanyl in the category of controlled substances. As a result, unregulated production and use, including exports, were made illegal in 2019.
Later that same year, on information presented by US authorities, a Chinese court imprisoned nine people, with one receiving a suspended death sentence, on charges of smuggling fentanyl into the US. In other words, Beijing did not let its anger over Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan stop case-by-case cooperation with the US.
01:44
US, China join forces to counter global fentanyl trade
US, China join forces to counter global fentanyl trade
In a domestic context, the US enhanced its control of fentanyl-related substances in 2020 through legislation which has since been extended until the end of 2024. Both governments now have similar regulatory policies on fentanyl as a substance.
A rationale for depoliticisation arises from this. Fentanyl as a substance has legitimate medicinal uses for pain control. Dealing with the resilience of worldwide illicit drug markets is a never-ending task for governments everywhere.
Within China itself, the illicit supply of harmful substances including fentanyl is a matter for Chinese law enforcement and public health agencies to tackle as well. Studies of Chinese court records point to hundreds of cases involving illicit production, trafficking and abuse of fentanyl, ketamine, synthetic cathinone and so on.
The straightforward logic for science- and profession-based collaboration with the US is that China can benefit from American expertise in tracing the origin of an illicit drug to its molecules, including those in chemical compounds produced in a facility located in a foreign country.
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers can be used to analyse the chemical structures of illicit drugs. In 2018, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that “as such equipment is mainly produced by manufacturers in the US, we hope the relevant US authorities will actively cooperate with the Chinese side and offer us relevant information on a regular basis”.
Thinking about the future of collaboration, the need for bilateral meetings to go beyond reiterating deliverables, such as by demonstrating political goodwill, is obvious. The task is not a trade-off between favours or sanctions. Instead, both China and the US face proven, stubborn societal complexities for their government agencies in treating counternarcotics as part of dealing with their respective domestic concerns.
The ongoing emphasis in bilateral discussions is centred on encouraging policies that require fentanyl precursor exporters to adopt a “know-your-customer” approach, as is common in the banking industry. While such an approach is accepted as a best practice for drug control, placing the responsibility on exporters is far from being sufficient given the shadowy origins of the customer base.
08:14
Hooked on heroin: A Chinese town's battle with trafficking and addiction
Hooked on heroin: A Chinese town's battle with trafficking and addiction
Against the larger background of biotechnology being an area of strategic competition between the US and China, a more sensible approach is to place safeguarding public health in both countries as a universal common good. One way to do that is to revisit restrictive policies on access to data and basic research of chemical sciences.
In addition, sharing information with international drug control agencies must improve. If the focus is left on substances already known to cause harm, the authorities will be behind the curve.
Given that counternarcotics is a long-standing challenge for the US, China and other countries, the necessity of science- and profession-based cooperation between them will only become more vital. Safeguarding public health is too essential a domain in bilateral relations to be treated in an ad hoc manner.
Zha Daojiong is a professor of international political economy in the School of International Studies, Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University
