In the ongoing battle to cut off the illegal flow of fentanyl into the United States, U.S. officials gained some ground this week—with China’s help.
The White House announced on Tuesday that China will more tightly regulate three ingredients used to make the deadly drug. U.S. officials had been pushing China to step up oversight of these chemicals since the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs added them to its list of controlled substances in 2022.
In a notice dated Aug. 2, 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 Sept. 1.
The dry, acronym-laden Chinese regulatory document may not seem like much on its face, but it reflects a larger trend: The United States and China are in a rare moment where they have managed to sustain cooperation even as competition in other spheres escalates. It is a fragile balance, but for now the superpowers are edging forward on a number of major global issues.
China’s willingness, or lack thereof, to come to the United States’ aid in the fentanyl fight has for many years tracked the broader trajectory in the bilateral relationship.
Until 2019, China was the main 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 gain support from China to crack down on the trade and regulate production of all fentanyl-related substances, greatly reducing the direct flow of fentanyl from China to the United States.
But in the subsequent years, Chinese companies shifted to manufacturing upstream ingredients to supply fentanyl producers in Mexico, becoming the dominant supplier of these ingredients. As U.S.-China tensions rose, cooperation fell apart even as overdose deaths rose sharply in the United States. After then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, which deeply angered Beijing, China fully cut off all counternarcotics talks with the United States along with all other major areas of joint action, showing that it was willing to weaponize cooperation to pursue better terms in the relationship.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco last November, China notably retreated from its position, recommitting to working with the United States on several key topics—including fentanyl, artificial intelligence, climate change, and military-to-military communication—even as tensions remained high.
This about-face reflected a desire by both sides to stabilize the relationship for their own reasons. China watchers surmised that Chinese officials were seeking stability externally to devote more attention to solving the country’s economic slowdown internally. Meanwhile, on the U.S. side, the Biden administration was hoping to avoid further escalation after setting in motion its initial tough agenda and to forge progress on issues critical to U.S. interests, such as fentanyl.
China’s willingness to come to the table on fentanyl specifically has also been driven by sticks from the U.S. side. The Biden administration added China to its annual list of major illicit drug-producing countries last year for the first time, dealing a reputational blow to China.
“Even just being placed on the list has been a major irritant for the Chinese government, because China wants to present itself as the world’s toughest drug cop,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively on global counternarcotics policy.
China hawks have long questioned the value of engagement, arguing that the United States gets strung along by China’s performance of cooperation and then is asked to pay too high a price for real progress. But so far, the renewed bilateral anti-drug efforts haven’t been just talk.
As seen in other areas of mutual concern since the San Francisco summit, this isn’t an era of headlining breakthroughs, but progress is possible. A new U.S.-China counternarcotics working group started meeting in January, and it yielded some results even before this week: Beijing has cracked down on online sales platforms for fentanyl, added more fentanyl substances to its list of regulated drugs, and worked with Washington to arrest a Chinese national accused of money laundering for the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.
The latest move, announced after U.S. and Chinese officials met in Washington last week, builds on this momentum. According to Chinese regulations, companies trying to export the three precursor chemicals will have to submit their export contracts and show proof that the importer is conducting legal business to the Chinese Commerce Ministry to obtain an export license.
Counternarcotics experts said this should reduce the volume of exports to Mexico, but it isn’t a panacea. One issue: Hundreds of thousands of small factories produce chemicals in China, so enforcement is a challenge. Another broader problem: Combating the fentanyl trade resembles a game of whack-a-mole—cartels have continued to find new ways to produce fentanyl using different precursor chemicals every time new restrictions are imposed.
Nonetheless, experts and U.S. officials welcomed China’s move. “When you’re dealing with something as complicated as the fentanyl supply chain, there is no single action that is going to solve [the problem],” said a senior U.S. administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We think that each one of these steps is an important step forward, and it’s a lot further than we were before cooperation resumed.”
Going forward, there is hope for further progress. “China has indicated their intention to schedule additional precursors,” the senior U.S. official said. “There are two key ones that we’re focused on that they’re aware of as well.”
In a statement to Foreign Policy, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said, “We hope that the U.S. side can work with China in the same direction, and continue our cooperation based on mutual respect, managing differences, and mutual benefits.”
But with the United States continuing to introduce new measures to compete with China on emerging technology and tensions simmering in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, will there be enough motivation to sustain engagement on fentanyl and other issues going forward?
Several experts and U.S. officials told 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 columnist at Foreign Policy. China still hopes such efforts will smooth tensions and “perhaps open the door for other conversations in the context of a stable U.S.-China relationship.”
China may also be motivated to repair its reputation. “China continues to be rather explicit that it expects payments for its cooperation,” said Felbab-Brown, adding that one of the issues high on China’s agenda is being removed from the list of major illicit drug-producing countries.
“I think China recognizes the role that 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 continue to hope that that remains a persuasive reason for China to continue to engage with us on this particular issue set.”
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