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US-China relations
CommentUnited States
Zha Daojiong
Zha Daojiong

Opinion | China-US cooperation on fentanyl shows value of putting politics aside

  • Counternarcotics efforts are an example of Washington and Beijing working together despite the persistent geopolitical tensions
  • Safeguarding public health in both countries is too important an aspect of bilateral relations to be treated in an ad hoc manner

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A US Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated pills containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York. Counternarcotics cooperation between the United States and China is expected to remain central to bilateral relations given the persistence of the fentanyl problem. Photo: AFP
Zha Daojiong
The China-US counternarcotics working group met recently in Beijing, with planned follow-up meetings in Washington in the spring. The meeting was uneventful and is a sign of positive development in the two countries’ political relationship.
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For these efforts to sustain their positive momentum, it is essential for both sides to work hard on depoliticising the group’s work down the road.

Critics could argue that even counternarcotics is inherently political in nature. After all, formal cooperation between the two country’s law enforcement and public health agencies suffered from a pause in the wake of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.
A year later, a bipartisan team of US lawmakers led by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer highlighted the necessity for resumption of talks on a visit to Beijing a year later. This paved the way for US President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping to announce an agreement when they met in San Francisco in November.
Such scepticism is only partially valid. The political relationship between the two countries has always been fraught with disputes in which neither side can back away from their respective stances. Still, counternarcotics has been an area of cooperation between the US and China since the 1980s, with success stories such as stemming the flow of illicit opium and heroin out of the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia and Afghanistan.
In recent years, the geography of the world’s illicit drug flows has changed to make China itself a source country. Central to the change is fentanyl and chemical precursors that can be turned into the final product, which is far deadlier than heroin.
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