China’s Expanding Illicit Drug Networks Raise Challenges for US Policy

As the White House pushes for more cooperation with China on counternarcotics, Chinese drug trafficking networks are growing.

An officer from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Trade and Cargo Division finds Oxycodone pills in a parcel at John F. Kennedy Airport's U.S. Postal Service facility in New York on June 24, 2019. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

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 past 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.