China and the US agreed to establish a direct line of communication and to continue regular scientist-to-scientist exchanges on potential synthetic drugs in high-level talks on Thursday.
The meeting was held in Beijing between China’s public security chief Wang Xiaohong and the United States’ Director of National Drug Control Policy, Rahul Gupta, along with a delegation of senior officials.
It was intended “to follow up on the commitment on counternarcotics cooperation” made by US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Woodside summit in California in November, the White House said.
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During the meeting, the two sides discussed “the importance of counternarcotics cooperation and the critical need to deliver tangible and sustainable results in addressing the shared threat posed by synthetic drug production and trafficking”.
“Both sides committed to alerting one another of the emergence of newly detected synthetic substances that present a potential emerging drug threat to both countries through establishing a direct line of communication and to continue regular scientist-to-scientist exchanges on this topic, with the next exchange taking place later in June,” the US readout said.
According to a statement from the Chinese side, Wang told Gupta that China was willing to “continue to strengthen bilateral and multilateral exchanges and cooperation in the anti-drug field with the US on the basis of mutual respect, management of differences and mutually beneficial cooperation”.
But Wang, a close aide to Xi, also urged the US to “pay attention to and effectively address the concerns of the Chinese side” to allow “pragmatic cooperation” between the two peoples. Wang did not elaborate on what the concerns were.
Thursday’s meeting was the latest effort as Beijing and Washington, amid geopolitical competition from trade to human rights, moved to stabilise ties following the meeting between Xi and Biden in November.
The two sides restarted talks on counter-narcotics and law enforcement cooperation at the start of the year, and on Wednesday China announced that local police in the northeastern province of Liaoning had detained a suspect allegedly involved in drug-related money laundering in the US following a tip-off provided by the US.
The case was hailed by China’s Ministry of Public Security, which is headed by Wang, as a “prime example of recent China-US anti-drug cooperation”.
On the same day, China announced that 45 new substances would be added to the supplementary list of controlled non-pharmaceutical narcotic drugs and psychotropic drugs, including several synthetic opioids, starting from July 1.
Counternarcotics cooperation between China and the US started as early as 1985. In 2003, the two sides established a mechanism for information exchange to tackle drug trafficking.
However, in August 2022, in retaliation for then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing officially announced it was ending all its counternarcotics and law enforcement cooperation with the US.
Washington has sought Beijing’s help to fight the drug crisis in the US by cracking down on the Chinese companies that sell chemicals – which Washington blamed as being the source of fentanyl that landed in the US – and other drugs to Mexican cartels.
To get China back to the table, the Biden administration agreed to lift sanctions on the Institute of Forensic Science. The institute, under the Chinese public security ministry, was accused of committing human rights violations against members of China’s Uygur minority.
China, which has officially controlled all forms of fentanyl as a class of drugs since 2019, has long rejected criticism that the country was fuelling the opioid crisis in the US, but said the US should tighten its domestic controls “rather than blaming others”.
More from South China Morning Post:
- China says US tip led to suspect in ‘prime example’ of cooperation amid fentanyl crisis
- Chinese ‘underground bankers’ launder Sinaloa cartel drug money, US says
- China, US security chiefs agree to keep talking on anti-narcotics cooperation
- ‘Fruitful results’: China’s top police chief hails joint crackdown with New Zealand against drug trafficking, fraud
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