«Данное сообщение (материал) создано и (или) распространено иностранным средством массовой информации, выполняющим функции иностранного агента, и (или) российским юридическим лицом, выполняющим функции иностранного агента»

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The president claims that drugs are poisoning geopolitics

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More than six years after Donald Trump, then in his first term as America’s president, mounted a trade war against China, the guns are firing again. On February 4th Mr Trump imposed an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, which responded with a slew of its own on various American products. Canada and Mexico, which had also been threatened with tariffs, gained at least a temporary reprieve. But even if China eventually gets a similar concession, the drugs that Mr Trump cites as the reason for his latest actions—synthetic opioids—will continue to devastate American lives and poison the Sino-American relationship. The battle over them will be bitter and protracted.

“The influx of these drugs to our Nation threatens the fabric of our society,” said Mr Trump’s announcement of the levy on Chinese goods. He accused China of “actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens”. China hit back: “Fentanyl is an issue for the us,” it said, warning that the levies could undermine co-operation on drug control.

Mr Trump’s claims about the opioid trade are hyperbolic, and his remedy counterproductive, but there is little doubt that the synthetic-drugs business is a problem and that China could do more. In the year to August 2024 nearly 90,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. The majority had taken fentanyl. Chinese firms are the main suppliers of chemicals that are “cooked” into fentanyl by cartels in Mexico and smuggled into America. (Almost none comes through Canada.)

Mr Trump has attempted to put some of the blame on Mr Biden, whom he accuses of failing to chivvy China’s leader, Xi Jinping, into fulfilling a promise (which Mr Trump says the Chinese president made during Mr Trump’s first term) to execute people who send fentanyl to America. “That would have stopped it,” he told reporters on January 23rd. But even if China made such a pledge, death sentences are unlikely to have helped. In 2019 China banned unauthorised manufacture of all fentanyl-type opioids. A Chinese court imposed a suspended death sentence on a man for trafficking fentanyl to America. But the crackdown led to Chinese firms exporting the chemical components, or “precursors”, of fentanyl instead. These often have legal uses as well.

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The problem is partly political. China expected rewards for taking America’s concerns more seriously. It was outraged when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Ministry of Public Security’s forensic-science institute in 2020 because of its alleged links with the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. China scaled back its co-operation with America in fighting drug crime. In 2022 it severed such collaboration in response to a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the then speaker of the House of Representatives. Co-operation resumed only after Mr Biden agreed to lift the sanctions in November 2023 during a summit in San Francisco with Mr Xi.

In January 2024 a new bilateral forum on counter-narcotics work met for the first time in Beijing. China took further steps to tighten its controls on opioid-related business. In September it imposed restrictions on three more fentanyl ingredients. It shut down 14 websites and more than 1,000 online shops that were offering precursors for sale. “As soon as something’s internationally agreed, they’ll control it. So I’ll give them credit for that,” says a senior official familiar with China’s efforts.

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But websites offering precursors still abound. If the sellers’ country of origin is not explicit, their contact details involving WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform, and Chinese mobile-phone numbers, make the China connection clear. “Safety Delivery to Mexico, usa”, says a dealer on a chemical trading platform in Shanghai, purporting to be from a firm in Anhui province. The webpage advertises 1-boc-4-ap, one of the precursors that China took action against in 2024. It may be a scam. But in July 2024 Reuters, a news agency, said its reporters in America had secured deliveries of precursors and a pill press from online sellers in China. They cost a total of about $3,600 and could have made tablets worth about $3m, according to Reuters.

Such sales could be disrupted by another measure announced by Mr Trump along with his latest tariffs: the scrapping of so-called “de minimis” exemptions from duties for small packages sent from China . De minimis products usually entered the country with very little inspection, making it easy for fentanyl-related shipments to evade detection.

Biden-era officials say that in 2023 Mr Xi appeared to get a better grasp of how neuralgic the fentanyl crisis had become in American politics, and seemed more willing to help. “China has worked more productively with the us during the last 15 months on the precursor issue,” says a former official involved in those efforts.

But in April last year a bipartisan committee of America’s House of Representatives released a report on China’s connections with fentanyl. It alleged that China’s security apparatus consistently cracks down against drug traffickers “only in cases that impact its domestic population”. It said China was using fentanyl as a “valuable rhetorical and propaganda tool” to highlight Western decadence. In July a senior American official said the Biden administration had no information to support the committee’s finding that China was actually subsidising precursor exports. But, the official said, “I think there’s a need for an ongoing conversation about that.”

Mr Trump’s tariffs will not encourage China to talk. But Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution in Washington believes America may have leverage. China is keen to be removed from an annual American list of major drug-producing and transit countries, to which it was added in 2023. Ms Felbab-Brown believes it could be willing to take further steps to stop the opioid-related trade if America agrees to remove that label. “China is very focused on its reputation,” she adds.

Even with China’s best efforts, the problem will not disappear quickly. The country has a vast and nimble chemical industry that, along with India’s, dominates global supplies of pharmaceutical raw materials. Its manufacturers can quickly produce other suitable chemicals if the government restricts sales of a fentanyl component. Their legitimate uses, in addition to their fentanyl-making ones, would make any government hesitate to stop their production completely. China’s local governments have an interest in protecting businesses that prop up sagging economic growth. And a tougher crackdown in China could push more of the business elsewhere, such as to India. In geopolitics, the poison will long persist. ■

Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.

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GeopoliticsChinaUnited States.css-2x8c4j{margin:0.875rem 0;}.css-2x8c4j .e12sz0jx0+*{margin-top:0.875rem;}.el1rg701+.css-2x8c4j{margin-top:0;}.css-1aogxph{color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-20);font-family:var(–mb-typeface-sans);font-size:var(–mb-typestyle-label-2-size);font-variant:var(–mb-typestyle-label-2-figures);line-height:var(–mb-typestyle-label-2-leading);}.css-1aogxph s,.css-1aogxph del{-webkit-text-decoration:line-through;text-decoration:line-through;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;}.css-1aogxph b{font-weight:var(–mb-font-weight-semibold);}.css-1aogxph i{font-style:italic;}.css-1aogxph sup{font-feature-settings:’sups’ 1;}.css-1aogxph sub{font-feature-settings:’subs’ 1;}.css-1aogxph u{text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;}.css-1aogxph a{color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-20);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-underline-offset:0.1875rem;}.css-1aogxph a:hover,.css-1aogxph a:focus,.css-1aogxph a:active{text-decoration-thickness:var(–mb-spacing-3xs);}.css-1aogxph a:hover{color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-30);}.css-1aogxph a:hover span{text-decoration-color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-30);}.css-1aogxph a:focus{background-color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-90);color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-5);text-decoration-color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-5);outline:none;}.css-1aogxph a:active{background-color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-90);color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-30);text-decoration-color:var(–mb-colour-base-chicago-30);}

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “The opioid war”

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China

February 8th 2025

• →Donald Trump’s new trade war with China is also an opioid war 
• →Cuts in American aid are crippling groups promoting rights in China

.css-ra48xw{font-family:var(–mb-typeface-serif);position:relative;}.css-duuyjs{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-box-pack:column;-ms-flex-pack:column;-webkit-justify-content:column;justify-content:column;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;text-align:center;-webkit-column-gap:var(–mb-spacing-lg);column-gap:var(–mb-spacing-lg);}.css-s61v3v{border-radius:0.125rem;box-shadow:-0.125rem 0.125rem 0.25rem 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.4);margin-bottom:0.75rem;min-width:10rem;max-width:12rem;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-s61v3v{min-width:12rem;}}.css-s61v3v img{display:block;max-width:100%;}.css-std7t4{max-width:16rem;}.css-nba04v{color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-5);font-family:var(–mb-typeface-serif);font-size:var(–mb-typestyle-title-3-size);font-variant:var(–mb-typestyle-title-3-figures);font-weight:var(–mb-font-weight-medium);line-height:var(–mb-typestyle-title-3-leading);margin-bottom:0.25rem;}

From the February 8th 2025 edition

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Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

⇒Explore the edition.css-v7aorn{margin-top:0.875rem;}.css-v7aorn +.eq1asik0{margin-top:3rem;padding-bottom:0;}.el1rg701+.css-v7aorn{margin-top:0;}.css-9ejc71{position:relative;border-bottom:0;border-top:0.0625rem solid var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-85);color:var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-35);}.css-9ejc71 .ebxshaw0{margin-top:0;}.css-9ejc71 >.e5z0ibw0>*{padding:var(–mb-spacing-md) 0;}.css-9ejc71 >.e5z0ibw0>*:nth-of-type(2){border-top:0.0625rem solid var(–mb-colour-greyscale-london-85);}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-9ejc71 >.e5z0ibw0>*:nth-of-type(2){border-top:0;}}.css-9ejc71 >.e5z0ibw0 .e5z0ibw0{gap:var(–mb-spacing-sm);}.css-yb4x8x{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-items:stretch;-webkit-box-align:stretch;-ms-flex-align:stretch;align-items:stretch;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:flex-start;justify-content:flex-start;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-yb4x8x{-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;}}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-yb4x8x{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-yb4x8x{-webkit-box-pack:end;-ms-flex-pack:end;-webkit-justify-content:flex-end;justify-content:flex-end;}}.css-1j1j36d{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;row-gap:0.6rem;-webkit-column-gap:var(–mb-spacing-sm);column-gap:var(–mb-spacing-sm);}ShareReuse this content.css-169lzn0{position:relative;-webkit-align-self:auto;-ms-flex-item-align:auto;align-self:auto;display:none;}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-column-start:9;}}@media (min-width: 89rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-column-start:13;}}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-column-end:13;}}@media (min-width: 89rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-column-end:17;}}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-row-start:1;}}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-169lzn0{grid-row-end:span 4;}}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-169lzn0{display:block;}}.css-169lzn0:last-child::after{height:0;}.css-1y1zooy{display:inline;}.css-1y1zooy >*+*{margin-top:2rem;}.css-1y1zooy >*:only-child{margin-top:1.25rem;}.css-1y1zooy >*:last-child{position:-webkit-sticky;position:sticky;top:1.5rem;}.css-mqgbir{margin-top:6rem;}.css-mqgbir .ds-section-headline{margin-bottom:1rem;}

More from China

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Chinese authorities try to stop parents gaming the exam system (again)

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They will go to great lengths to try

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China’s alarming sex imbalance

By 2027 one in six young Chinese men won’t be able to find a partner

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Behind DeepSeek lies a dazzling Chinese university

It models itself on Stanford, and is in the tech hotspot of Hangzhou

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Panama symbolises the Sino-American struggle for influence

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Tensions with the West are fuelling China’s anxiety about food supplies

Grain pains are growing

Hail China’s new “ice-and-snow economy”

The country is betting on winter sports and tourism to boost growth in its rustbelt

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Источник: www.economist.com