Fentanyl is the synthetic opioid driving America’s public health crisis. Its cheap price, widespread use, addictive quality and deadly effect make it more dangerous than other narcotics classified by the DEA.
It is, ultimately, a chemical. And it’s being used as a weapon in China’s 21st century Opium War against America.
President Donald Trump’s 12-day, five-nation Asia tour will focus on North Korean nukes and international trade. In Beijing, however, he plans to address China’s fentanyl production and distribution, an industry that fuels what the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission calls “China’s deadly export to the United States.” Trump holds undeniable moral authority when it comes to substance abuse, having personally seen and felt the effects on his family. Forcing China’s hand on fentanyl is the right thing to do.
Drug abuse is inherently a demand issue, with the underlying problem being America’s insatiable narcotics need. But there is an international supply part to the drug equation that stretches from China’s bottomless fentanyl manufacture to its bulk shipping of the deadly white powder into global markets. If Trump can get China to constrain its cheap supply, he might significantly reduce the problem.
And if any government can control its nation’s industry, it is the one in Beijing. China already uses its authoritarian state structure to control the movement of people and ideas within its country with stunning efficiency. It even manages to do so in other jurisdictions as, for example, when it kidnaps book publishers in Hong Kong.
China is more passive, however, when asked to act responsibly or confront threats to the United States that are otherwise perceived as serving Beijing’s strategic interests. North Korea is an example.
North Korea developed its nuclear capacity with China’s acquiescence, if not outright support and blessing. Why? Because the Kim clan has provided the Chinese a strategic tool to leverage against the US. Pyongyang’s nukes make China indispensable to any Korean Peninsula negotiations and future. China’s strategic moves introduced a nuclear wild card into the international security game. A nuclear-armed North Korea seemed a lesser concern to China than the perceived value of bullying South Korea and the regional neutering of America’s military might.
Fentanyl is the nuclear narcotic that is killing thousands of Americans today and another example of China’s two-faced approach. The chemical, known as “China Girl” or “China White” on the street, may have some Chinese victims, but its true value is as a profitable opiate export that also destroys American communities and roils the US political landscape. Drug exports have allowed for the establishment of new Chinese-run drug cartels and distributors within the United States while untimely and tragic American deaths are recorded daily, as highlighted by the president when he declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency.”
China has a deep and visceral understanding of how an Opium War can convulse a nation and collapse an empire. After all, it happened to them in the 19th century. Chinese call it their “Century of Humiliation.” Now the tables have turned. China has absorbed the Century of Humiliation’s lessons of stealth attack and economic power and applied them globally. President Xi Jinping sits atop the world’s power pinnacle, with a recent Economist cover story calling him “the world’s most powerful man,” and the US president acknowledging Xi’s king-like authority.
But either this omnipotent man can control his population or not.
Given China’s authoritarian tech and police state tools, Xi’s monopoly power gives him extraordinary abilities to monitor and manage domestic criminal activity. Trump should not call to crack down further on the general population, but appeal for a more targeted application of Beijing’s honed control practices. Since China already easily and regularly arrests bloggers, virtual private network users, artists, protesters and other innocents, it can certainly find and disrupt criminal cartels cooking up deadly street drugs for sale in America.
If not, then the United States needs to take an even more aggressive stance against China. It must be recognized that China’s new opium war, combined with her cyberattacks on American infrastructure and information, is further tearing at the increasingly fragile fabric of American society, institutions and competitiveness.
Trade imbalances with China gnaw at the president. The trillions that flow one way have underwritten the Chinese economic juggernaut and fueled Communist Party power. American money built a peer competitor to the United States. Trump maintains that America’s fat trade is now the key to leverage deals with China.
The US regularly uses trade sanctions to punish foreign players or force them to the negotiating table. During Trump’s trip and eventual meeting with freshly super-empowered Xi, he needs to align America’s regional allies and lay out a tough approach to both North Korea and the drug war being waged against America’s people.
Trump must use his plain talk and pushy style to make clear to President Xi that with Chinese fentanyl, America is under attack and a chemical weapons red line is being crossed.
By Markos Koulanakis
Markos Kounalakis is a senior fellow at Central European University and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. -- Ed.
