- U.S. and Chinese officials have pledged to work together to stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
- The United States is calling for more information sharing and law enforcement cooperation, as well as controls for Chinese chemicals used to make fentanyl.
- The first meeting of the new US-China working group focused on fentanyl and its ingredients sourced from China.
U.S. and Chinese officials pledged Tuesday to work together to stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States, the head of the visiting U.S. delegation said. The talks were a hopeful sign of cooperation as the two world powers seek to better manage their rivalry.
Jen Dascal, the White House’s vice president for homeland security, said the U.S. is seeking more intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation, as well as the designation and control of chemicals made in China that are used to make fentanyl made in other countries. Stated.
“Obviously we need to see the results, we need to see the actions,” he said in a phone interview after the meeting. “But there was a real spirit of cooperation and a determination to work together.”
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The first meeting of the new U.S.-China Drug Task Force will be followed by a more in-depth meeting of a smaller group on Wednesday. A big focus has been on fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is ravaging America, especially since the drug’s ingredients and pills are imported from China.
U.S. Deputy Assistant to the President and Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Jen Dascal shakes hands with Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong before a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on January 30, 2024. Officials pledged to work together to stop the problem.Fentanyl coming into the US (AP Photo/Ng Hanguan, Pool)
When Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden outside San Francisco in November, they agreed to resume cooperation in drug trafficking and several other areas. The agreement was a small step forward in relations strained by major differences on issues ranging from trade and technology to Taiwan and human rights.
The United States has called on China to do more to curb exports of the chemical, which it says is processed into fentanyl primarily in Mexico before the final product is smuggled into the United States.
Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong said the two countries held in-depth and pragmatic consultations.
“We have reached a common understanding of the working group’s work program,” he said at the working group’s launch ceremony.
Daskal said Biden sent a high-level delegation “to emphasize the importance of this issue to the American people.”
He said there has been a slight decline in shipments of fentanyl “precursors” from China since the Biden-Xi meeting, and said he is looking to identify trends and come up with alternatives if supplies of certain ingredients are depleted. He emphasized the importance of sharing information with fentanyl producers. Up.
“There’s a real sense of urgency,” she said, pointing to the high number of fentanyl-related deaths in the United States and the violence, corruption and instability caused by drug cartels around the world.
China was once a major supplier of fentanyl, and the United States credits Beijing with a 2019 crackdown that led to a “significant reduction in seizures of fentanyl shipments from China.”
Synthetic opioids are the biggest killer in the deadliest drug crisis the United States has ever seen. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100,000 people will die from drug overdoses in 2022. More than two-thirds involved fentanyl or similar synthetic drugs.
China has so far rejected U.S. requests for aid amid worsening relations with world powers, saying the U.S. should look inward to resolve its domestic problems and not blame China. He often answered that there was no such thing.
Negotiations were officially frozen in 2022 when China suspended cooperation in several areas, including drugs, in protest of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
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The ice has begun to thaw in preparation for the Biden-Xi summit in November 2023. A U.S. Senate delegation pursued the fentanyl issue during a visit to Beijing in October, and Chinese officials said they expressed sympathy for victims of the U.S. opioid crisis.
However, China refused to discuss cooperation unless the United States lifted sanctions on the Ministry of Public Security’s Forensic Research Institute. The Commerce Department imposed sanctions on the institute in 2020 for complicity in human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in China’s Xinjiang region.
The US quietly agreed to lift sanctions in order to gain cooperation on fentanyl. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi acknowledged the “removal of the obstacle of unilateral sanctions” in his speech on China-US relations.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said this was an “appropriate step to take” given China’s aggressive efforts to combat fentanyl precursor trafficking.
