China Tightens Fentanyl Regulations After US Talks

In the ongoing battle to stem the flow of illicit fentanyl into the United States, U.S. authorities made some progress this week, with help from China.

The White House announced Tuesday that China will impose stricter regulations on three ingredients used to make the deadly drug. U.S. officials had been pressing China to tighten oversight of the chemicals since the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs added them to its list of controlled substances in 2022.

In an August 2 announcement, the Chinese government said it will add the three ingredients – 4-AP, 1-boc-4-AP and norfentanyl – to its own list of controlled chemicals on September 1.

The dry, acronym-laden Chinese regulatory document may not seem like much at first glance, but it reflects a larger trend: The United States and China are in a rare moment where they have managed to maintain cooperation even as competition in other areas intensifies. It’s a delicate balance, but for now the superpowers are slowly making progress on some key global issues.

China’s willingness, or lack thereof, to come to the aid of the United States In the fight against fentanyl, the broader trajectory in the bilateral relationship has been followed for years.

Until 2019, China was the primary source of fentanyl flowing into the United States. As the opioid epidemic exploded and fentanyl overdoses became a leading cause of death for Americans, U.S. officials were able to get support from China to restrict the trade and regulate the production of all fentanyl-related substances, significantly reducing the direct flow of fentanyl from China to the United States.

But in the years that followed, Chinese companies shifted to producing upstream ingredients to supply fentanyl producers in Mexico, becoming the dominant supplier of these ingredients. As tensions between the U.S. and China increased, the partnership disintegrated, even as overdose deaths in the United States surged. Following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, which deeply angered Beijing, China completely broke off all counternarcotics negotiations with the United States, along with all other major areas of joint action, demonstrating its willingness to use cooperation as a weapon to pursue better terms in the relationship.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping met with US President Joe Biden in San Francisco last November, China conspicuously backed down from its position and pledged to resume cooperation with the United States on several key issues, including fentanyl, artificial intelligence, climate change and military communications, even as tensions remained high.

The about-face reflected a desire on both sides to stabilize the relationship for their own reasons. China watchers suspected that Chinese officials were seeking stability externally in order to focus more on resolving the country’s economic slowdown internally. Meanwhile, on the U.S. side, the Biden administration hoped to avoid further escalation after initiating its initial hardline agenda and make progress on issues critical to U.S. interests, such as fentanyl.

China’s willingness to come to the table specifically on fentanyl has also been fueled by U.S. pushback. The Biden administration last year for the first time added China to its annual list of major illicit drug-producing countries, damaging China’s reputation.

“The fact that they’re on the list is a huge irritant to the Chinese government, because China wants to portray itself as the toughest drug enforcement agency in the world,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, who has written extensively on global drug control policy.

China hawks have long hesitated the value of involvement, claiming that the United States is being strung along by China’s performance of cooperation and then paying too high a price for real progress. But so far, the renewed bilateral anti-drug efforts have not been just talk.

As we’ve seen in other areas of mutual concern since the San Francisco summit, this is not an era of groundbreaking breakthroughs, but progress is possible. A new U.S.-China drug control task force began meeting in January and was already producing results even before this week: Beijing has cracked down on online fentanyl sales platforms, added more fentanyl substances to its list of controlled drugs, and worked with Washington to arrest a Chinese national accused of laundering money for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

The latest move, announced after U.S. and Chinese officials met in Washington last week, builds on that momentum. Under Chinese regulations, companies that want to export the three precursor chemicals must file their export contracts and provide evidence that the importer is doing legal business with China’s Ministry of Commerce to obtain an export license.

Drug enforcement experts said it should reduce the volume of exports to Mexico, but it’s no silver bullet. One problem: Hundreds of thousands of small factories produce the chemicals in China, making enforcement a challenge. Another broader problem: Fighting the fentanyl trade has become a bit like a game of whack-a-mole: Cartels keep finding new ways to produce fentanyl using different precursor chemicals each time new restrictions are imposed.

Still, experts and U.S. officials welcomed the Chinese move. “When you’re dealing with something as complex as the fentanyl supply chain, there’s no single action that’s going to solve (the problem),” said a senior U.S. administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We think each of these steps is a significant step forward, and it’s much further along than we were before cooperation resumed.”

There is hope for further progress. “China has indicated that they are planning to plan additional precursors,” the senior U.S. official said. “There are two main ones that we are focused on and that they are aware of as well.”

In a statement to Foreign policyLiu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “We hope that the US side can work with China in the same direction and continue our cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, coping with differences and mutual benefits.”

But as the United States continues to implement new measures to compete with China on new technologies and tensions rise in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, is there sufficient incentive to continue engagement on fentanyl and other issues in the future?

Several experts and US officials said Foreign policy that the outlook is cautiously optimistic for now. “Given the status of the U.S.-China relationship, I think China has an incentive to cooperate,” said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for Foreign policyChina still hopes that such efforts will ease tensions and “perhaps open the door to other talks in the context of a stable US-China relationship.”

China may also be motivated to restore its reputation. “China remains quite explicit that it expects payments for its cooperation,” Felbab-Brown said, adding that one of the issues high on China’s agenda is to be removed from the list of major illegal drug-producing countries.

“I think China recognizes the role they play in this global problem and the opportunity to be a global leader in finding the solution,” the senior U.S. official said. “We remain hopeful that this continues to be a compelling reason for China to continue to engage with us on this particular issue.”