China and US agree to scientist exchanges in fight against synthetic drugs trade

China and the United States have agreed to establish a direct line of communication and to continue regular exchanges between scientists on potential synthetic drugs.

The agreement came during high-level talks in Beijing on Thursday between China's public security chief, Wang Xiaohong, and Rahul Gupta, director of National Drug Control Policy, along with a delegation of senior officials.

The White House said the meeting 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.

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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 said in a statement.

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 by Beijing and Washington to stabilise ties.

The two sides restarted talks on counternarcotics and law enforcement cooperation at the start of the year, and on Wednesday China announced that 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 from the US.

China's Ministry of Public Security, which is headed by Wang, cited the case 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. It wants China to crack down on the Chinese companies that sell chemicals for fentanyl 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, which comes under the Ministry of Public Security, 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".

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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