China tightens fentanyl regulations after talks with US

In the ongoing battle to stop the illegal flow of fentanyl into the United States, US authorities gained ground this week with help from China.

The White House announced the Tuesday China will more tightly regulate three ingredients used to make the deadly drug. US officials have been pushing China to step up monitoring of the chemicals since the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs added them to its list of controlled substances. in 2022.

In a notice On August 2, the Chinese government announced that it would add the three ingredients 4-AP, 1-boc-4-AP and norfentanyl to its own list of controlled chemicals on September 1.

China’s dry, acronym-laden regulatory document may seem insignificant at first glance, but it reflects a broader trend: The United States and China are in a rare situation where they have managed to maintain cooperation even as competition intensifies in other areas. The balance is delicate, but for now, the superpowers are making progress on a number of major global issues.

China’s will, or lack thereof, to assist the United States in the fight against fentanyl has for many years followed the broader trajectory of bilateral relations.

Until 2019, China was the main source of fentanyl entering the United States. As the opioid epidemic has exploded and fentanyl overdoses have become a main cause of death for Americans, US officials were able to enlist Chinese support to suppress trade and regulate production all fentanyl related substances significantly reducing the direct flow of fentanyl from China to the United States.

But in the years since, Chinese companies have shifted to manufacturing upstream ingredients to supply fentanyl producers in Mexico, becoming the dominant supplier of these ingredients. As tensions between the United States and China rose, cooperation collapsed, even as overdose deaths increased sharply in the United States. Following the visit of Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, to Taiwan in August 2022, which deeply angered Beijing, China has fully cut all the anti-drug negotiations with the United States as well as all other major areas of joint action, showing that they were prepared to use cooperation as a weapon to obtain better conditions in the relationship.

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

The shift reflects both sides’ desire to stabilize their relationships for their own reasons. China watchers have speculated that Chinese officials are seeking external stability to devote more attention to addressing the country’s economic slowdown internally. Meanwhile, on the US side, the Biden administration has hoped to avoid further escalation after implementing its tough initial agenda and forge progress on issues critical to US interests, such as fentanyl.

China’s willingness to trade fentanyl has also been driven by pressure from the United States. The Biden administration added China to its annual list of major illicit drug-producing countries. last year for the first time, dealing a blow to China’s reputation.

Just being listed has been a major irritant for the Chinese government, because China wants to portray itself as the world’s toughest drug cop, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Non-State Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, who has written extensively on global counternarcotics policy.

Chinese hawks have The United States has long questioned the value of engagement, arguing that the United States was being fooled by China’s record of cooperation and then paying too high a price for real progress. But so far, renewed bilateral efforts in the fight against drugs have not gone unnoticed.

As has been seen in other areas of mutual interest since the San Francisco summit, this is not a time of major breakthroughs, but progress is possible. A new China-US counternarcotics working group began meeting in January and was producing results even before this week: Beijing has repressed on online fentanyl sales platforms, added more fentanyl substances to its list of controlled drugs and worked with Washington to Stop a Chinese national accused of money laundering for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

The latest initiative, announced after a meeting between US and Chinese officials in Washington last week, builds on that momentum. Chinese regulationsCompanies attempting to export the three precursor chemicals will need to submit their export contracts and prove that the importer is conducting legal activities to China’s Ministry of Commerce to obtain an export license.

Drug enforcement experts say the measure should reduce the volume of exports to Mexico, but it’s not a panacea. One problem: Hundreds of thousands of small factories produce chemicals in China, making enforcement difficult. Another, larger problem: Combating the fentanyl trade has become a game of cat and mouse: Cartels have continued to find new ways to produce fentanyl using different precursor chemicals each time new restrictions are imposed.

Still, experts and US officials have welcomed China’s move. When it comes to a problem as complex as the fentanyl supply chain, no single measure can solve the problem. (the problem)said a senior US administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. We believe that each of these steps is an important step forward, and that we have made significant progress compared to what we were doing before the resumption of cooperation.

Moving forward, There is hope for further progress. China has indicated its intention to program additional precursors, the senior US official said. There are two main precursors that it is focusing on and is also aware of.

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

But as the United States continues to introduce new measures to compete with China on emerging technologies and tensions simmer in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, will there be enough motivation to maintain engagement on fentanyl and other issues in the future?

Several US experts and officials have said Foreign policy “The outlook is cautiously optimistic so far. Given the state of Sino-US relations, I think China has an interest in cooperating,” said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a senior fellow in 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 further talks in the context of a stable US-China relationship.

China may also be motivated to burnish its image. It continues to be quite explicit about expecting payments for its cooperation, Felbab-Brown said, adding that one of the main issues on China’s agenda is to get off the list of major illicit drug-producing countries.

“I think China recognizes the role that it plays in this global problem and the opportunity to play a global leadership role in finding a solution,” the senior US official said. “We continue to hope that that remains a compelling reason for China to continue to engage with us on this particular issue.”