The Chinese regime began a secret project during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term to weaken the United States by scaling up production of fentanyl precursors and shipping them to Mexico and Canada for manufacturing and distribution across the border, according to an insider who has sources in Beijing’s top political circle.

The plan, which the Chinese regime has dubbed Project Zero, aims to make Americans addicted, according to Yuan Hongbing, a dissident and jurist living in exile in Australia. His sources are close to the descendants of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They asked to remain anonymous because of security concerns.

Top CCP officials have continued to push fentanyl into the United States, Yuan told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

Fear that the plan will leak out, contradicting Beijing’s claim that it is being a responsible actor, is one reason Beijing has chosen to go head to head with Washington during the current tariff war, Yuan said.

During his first term, Trump pressed CCP leader Xi Jinping to stop the flow of Chinese fentanyl precursors into the United States. However, Xi has repeatedly referred to another part of Chinese history—the Opium Wars—and blamed the West for once turning China into a semicolonial society.

According to Yuan, Xi considers the rampant drug abuse in the United States to be “retribution” and a clear indicator of Xi’s belief that the East is on the rise and the West is in decline.

Project Zero was conceived in that spirit, Yuan said.

Yuan taught for eight years at China’s prestigious Peking University in Beijing and for another 10 years at the state-affiliated Guizhou Normal University in southwest China. He has maintained connections with some who hold key positions in the Chinese political and legal system and armed forces.

R. Evan Ellis, research professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, worked in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources under the first Trump administration, when the department began to push China to curb fentanyl production. He identified the Chinese city of Wuhan as a crucial fentanyl supplier due to its “strong pharmaceutical and chemical industry.”

“China was literally sending packages of fentanyl through the post office, arriving directly in the United States from China,” Ellis told reporters for the Spanish edition of The Epoch Times.

Mexico became the ideal location in China’s fentanyl distribution chain because of the country’s history of drug smuggling and corruption, according to Aaron Graham, former agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“In Mexico, you can pay customs officials to get it in, and then they can set up clandestine laboratories protected by the police,” he told The Epoch Times.

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“Everything is protected by the [Mexican] police,” Graham said. The cartels have “all the mechanisms in place and perhaps, most importantly ... proximity.”

Beijing officials have denied responsibility for the fentanyl crisis, asserting that the issue is the “United States’ problem, not China’s.”

The House Select Committee on the CCP, in an April 2024 report, said it found that the regime directly subsidizes illicit narcotics such as fentanyl materials and that Chinese companies have been eligible for tax rebates and other monetary benefits after exporting the precursor chemicals.

Beijing has given monetary grants and awards to companies “openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics,” the report reads. Some companies have also received site visits from provincial officials, who have praised them for contributing to the local economy, it states.

The committee noted that China’s security services “have not cooperated with U.S. law enforcement and have even notified targets of U.S. investigations when they received requests for assistance.”

The report states that the regime has allowed illicit drug sales on the tightly controlled Chinese internet. The Chinese censors have set up online triggers to block some domestic drug transactions, but not for export-focused content, according to the report.

“Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,” then-committee Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said at an April 2024 hearing, titled “The CCP’s Role in the Fentanyl Crisis.”

Trump, in a February statement explaining the fentanyl-related tariffs on China, said he wants to hold Beijing accountable for facilitating the synthetic opioid supply chain.

Chinese communist officials read the current tension as a sign that Washington has learned about their fentanyl plans, according to Yuan.

“Xi believes there’s no turning back,” he told The Epoch Times. Should the U.S. government publicize the Project Zero plan, he said, Xi could face criminal charges as “one of the world’s biggest drug lords.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment regarding the Chinese regime’s Project Zero fentanyl plan.

The court ruling was a blow to Xi, Yuan said. If the United States continues to seek accountability over COVID-19’s global spread, Xi will have to be the one to answer for it, he said.

The Chinese foreign ministry made Beijing’s stance clear in an April 29 video, titled “Never Kneel Down.” The video claimed that the United States has set a “deadly trap” for the Chinese regime.

To bow down, it said, would be like “drinking poison to quench thirst—it only deepens the crisis.”