Fentanyl crisis is ‘China’s payback for Opium Wars’

China’s autocratic Communist Party has denied allegations it is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the United States. Even though the world’s second-largest economy is the main source of the chemical precursors used by criminal cartels to produce the drug.

Already US President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear he will stem the tide of narcotics entering the country with punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. He will also target financial institutions that are claimed to be linked to the fentanyl trade.

Rattled by Trump’s plan, China’s state-run media was mobilized in a series of editorials and commentaries last week. Guo Yongliang, the deputy dean of the Institute of Foreign Security at the China People’s Police University, wrote in Global Times:

As a result of repeated hype by the US, the fentanyl issue has become a ‘sensitive topic’ in China-US relations, with some American actions turning the fentanyl issue into a tool for extortion and diplomatic attacks against China.

English-language mouthpiece China Daily disappeared down the same rabbit hole. An editorial screamed, Scapegoating others can’t end the US drug crisis. It also pointed out that “the excuse given to justify additional tariffs is farfetched.”

By the numbers:

• About 400,000 people in the US died of “opioid toxicity” between 2016 and 2024.
• That was similar to the number of Americans lost in World War II.
• “As in war, fentanyl’s victims are typically young,” CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster, reported at the weekend.

Delve deeper: Last year, John A Cassara, a former US intelligence officer and Treasury Special Agent, gave written testimony to the US House Committee on Financial Services dealing with national security, illicit finance, and international institutions.

Drug use has long been considered a form of warfare.

John A Cassara, a former US intelligence officer and Treasury Special Agent

What he said: “Drug use has long been considered a form of warfare. Others have advanced the premise that CCP [China’s Communist Party] Inc is flooding the US and the West with opioids as payback for the Opium Wars during the mid-19th century.”

Between the lines: “The agreements reached between the Western powers and China following the Opium Wars came to be known as the ‘unequal treaties’”. It heralded China’s ‘Century of Humiliation’,” which is etched in the Communist Party’s psyche.

Big picture: Whatever the reasons, “the US drug habit has been a national disgrace,” Cassara pointed out in his written testimony in 2023.

Bottom line: “But make no mistake, China is a leading global producer of … new illicit drugs [behind the wave of fentanyl addiction],” the author of China – Specified Unlawful Activities: CCP Inc, Transnational Crime and Money Laundering said, adding:

If the CCP [were] to direct its robust censorship apparatus that is very effective in thwarting websites it deems a threat to its regime, it could easily do the same with companies’ websites advertising fentanyl and other dangerous and illegal drugs.

China Factor comment: What is “deeply troubling” is the fact that “CCP Inc allows hundreds of websites advertising fentanyl and its precursors to remain online,” as Cassara stressed in his testimony. Yet another example of Beijing’s war on the West.