China and US vow closer cooperation in fighting America’s fentanyl crisis as drugs group begins its work
- Washington said new working group’s first meeting in Beijing was a ‘good start’ but says ‘there’s a lot more work to be done’ in fighting illicit opioid trade
- Agreement to work together in the war on drugs was hailed as one of the main ‘breakthroughs’ following the summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping last year
“It is hoped that both sides will … continually expand cooperation in various fields to inject more positive energy for the stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US relations,” Wang Xiaohong, the Chinese Minister of Public Security, told the working group’s inaugural session, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua.
The US said the two sides had agreed to better coordinate efforts by law enforcement to disrupt the flow of fentanyl and its precursor chemicals, address the illicit financing of transnational networks and improve information sharing.
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US, China join forces to counter global fentanyl trade
“It was a good set of discussions,” White House national security council spokesman John Kirby told the press on Tuesday. “That’s a good start, but it is just a start. And there’s a lot more work to be done.
“The goal here is to produce concrete and measurable actions that lead to a reduction in the supply of these precursor chemicals that are killing, again, so many Americans.”
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The US has also labelled China as a “primary source” of ingredients used in manufacturing fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances illegally brought into the US largely by Mexican cartels, but Beijing has long denied any involvement in America’s deadly opioid crisis.
The Ministry of Public Security lab had been sanctioned in 2020 over alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang, accusations China strongly denies.
Meanwhile, the Chinese narcotics control commission warned companies and individuals against selling equipment and precursor chemicals that could be used to produce the opioid overseas, and the authorities have also pledged to target the “smuggling and trafficking of fentanyl-type substances”.
Opioid overdoses killed more than 80,000 people in the US in 2021, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly 88 per cent of those deaths involved low-cost and highly potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
In an address to US business leaders in San Francisco in November, Xi said that China “sympathises deeply with the American people, especially the young” over the suffering caused by fentanyl.
During the same trip, Xi met his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who also pledged to work with China to combat the problem.
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China, which sees Taiwan as part of China, viewed her trip as a serious breach of its sovereignty. The US, in common with most countries, does not recognise Taiwan as independent but opposes any forcible change in the status quo.
A financial working group has also been meeting and the two countries are planning talks on artificial intelligence and to hold the first meeting of a new commercial working group in the coming weeks.
