WASHINGTON (TND) — On Wednesday, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged from a four-hour meeting with a renewed understanding of how to disrupt the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
Much of it is based on China bolstering enforcement of existing laws and regulations related to suppliers of illicit precursor chemicals and pill presses. According to the White House, the Chinese government will start taking law enforcement action against Chinese suppliers of these materials and issue a notice to domestic industries. The White House said, "(a)s a result, certain (People's Republic of China)-based pharmaceutical companies have ceased operations and have had some international payment accounts blocked."
"It’s gonna save lives and I appreciate President Xi’s commitment on this issue. President Xi and I tasked our teams to maintain a policy and law enforcement coordination going forward to make sure it works," Biden said during a press conference Wednesday night.
RAND Corporation Senior International and Defense Researcher Dave Luckey, who previously served at the Department of Homeland Security, called this a "massive step."
China being a command-driven economy, all policy and regulation stems from Xi. And so when there’s a policy change directed by Xi himself, others will follow his lead and act and implement these changes on his behalf. Everybody will, in China, will then see the importance of this because Xi has made a proclamation," Luckey said.
Earlier this month, for the first time in almost three years, China resumed submissions to the International Narcotics Control Board's global database, which tracks suspicious drug activity and is used to disrupt illicit synthetic drug supply chains.
“It’s significant because all the nations of the world are you know, need to be involved in this because what we don’t want is, for example, China to curtail production of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors and have some other nation pick up the production of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors," Luckey said.
He said China hadn't placed this much emphasis on synthetic opioids since 2018 when the U.S. and China previously interacted on the issue.
"If we have you know, even modest success, that again bodes very well because the last time this occurred, China scheduled fentanyl and all fentanyl analogs and really stopped to a large extent, stopped the production of fentanyl that was entering the illicit supply chain," Luckey said.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, criticized the announcement.
Xi Jinping is a communist dictator with a long history of empty promises. The fentanyl 'deal' is no more than an agreement for the CCP to stop doing what it previously insisted it wasn’t doing. Dealmaking with the CCP means America pays upfront in exchange for a check that’s always lost in the mail,” Gallagher told The National Desk in a statement.
Expectations heading into the Biden-Xi meeting were low. Earlier in the week, Biden said his goal was to restore correspondence after a year had passed without the leaders meeting.
The plan to address fentanyl caught some by surprise, but Luckey said China's motivation is clear.
“I think ultimately, as we’ve seen historically, China doesn’t want to be a global drug dealer, right, that’s a very negative connotation for a nation-state to have. No nation wants to be seen as a global dealer of illicit drugs, particularly ones causing the death and destruction like fentanyl does," he said.
On Friday, Biden will meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The issue is expected to come up, but it's entirely possible Biden sees more pushback from López Obrador than he did from Xi.
López Obrador has cast doubt on U.S. government data about cartels processing precursor chemicals into fentanyl and smuggling it into the U.S., instead blaming the U.S. for the crisis.
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November 17, 2023 at 03:51AM
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White House details agreement with China to curb flow of fentanyl - WOAI
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