As the White House pushes for more cooperation with China on counternarcotics, Chinese drug trafficking networks are growing.
President Joe Biden signed a proclamation in August commemorating Overdose Awareness Week, a solemn moment for a nation that has witnessed more than half a million deaths from drug overdose in the last decade.
The president hailed his administration’s “re-launch of counternarcotics cooperation” with communist China as a vital tool in combating the flow of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the United States.
It was partly this cooperation on counternarcotics that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan then traveled to China to support.
For three days, Sullivan met with top officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), before telling reporters in Beijing that the administration is dedicated to getting Chinese assistance over synthetic opioids.
“We’re going to look for further progress on counternarcotics and reducing the flow of illicit synthetic drugs into the United States,” Sullivan said on Aug. 29.
As Sullivan was preparing to leave Beijing, however, another senior Biden administration official was delivering a different message 5,000 miles to the southeast.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was in the island nation of Vanuatu, promising locals that the United States would crack down on the growing networks of Chinese drug traffickers.
Those networks, he said, were positioning themselves to increase the flow of fentanyl into the United States and elsewhere by expanding new shipping lanes throughout the Indo-Pacific.
“We are concerned some of the networks that have grown in China and South East Asia are beginning to use the Pacific for transshipment both to Latin America and the United States,” he said.
Campbell reassured those present that the United States would work with foreign nations to rein in drug trafficking by criminal networks from China. But his admission of a growing Chinese drug trade raises questions as to the efficacy of the Biden administration’s counternarcotics engagements with China.
