China’s communist regime is directly subsidizing the manufacture of illegal opioid analogues that are shipped en masse to the Americas, according to a new congressional investigation.
The report, published by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), found evidence that the regime is knowingly allowing and encouraging the export of illegal chemicals used in the production of drugs that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said during an April 16 hearing that the CCP was encouraging the illegal flow of deadly drugs for the purpose of weakening and undermining the United States as a whole.
“Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It wants the chaos and devastation that has resulted from this epidemic. And yes, that means more dead Americans.”
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years, including 76,000 last year alone. The bulk of the drugs responsible for those deaths are manufactured in Mexico with chemicals made in China.
Though most of the chemicals in question are illegal in both the United States and China, the Select Committee’s report found that the CCP is offering massive tax subsidies and giving grants to companies engaged in the creation and export of such drugs to the Americas.
Thus, while the regime has used its massive surveillance and censorship apparatus to prosecute and execute drug makers within China, it is actively contributing to the growth of those who sell their illicit goods overseas.
“Across the world, fentanyl deaths are soaring, but apparently not in [China],” said Select Committee Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.).
“The CCP says that they’re addressing the fentanyl issues, but they’re not prosecuting criminals, they’re letting companies openly sell this stuff online, and they’re letting people, but only those outside of China, buy this stuff online,” he said.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi shared an official CCP website that is available in China but not made public to the English-speaking world that allows users to search for tax subsidies available to various companies.
According to that site, several Chinese companies that openly advertise that they sell illegal drugs to the Americas are receiving tax subsidies and grant funding from the regime.
The Select Committee’s report also found that the CCP has ownership stakes in some of those same companies.
Drug Deaths Likened to WWII
Former Attorney General Bill Barr testified to the Select Committee that the CCP’s actions were the international equivalent of “shooting into a crowd.”“Those who ply and enable this trade know with moral certainty that they are killing people on a massive scale,” Mr. Barr said. “And the scale of carnage is intolerable and getting worse.”
“We are now sustaining, year in and year out, a casualty rate from drug overdoses that exceeds the death toll we suffered in waging a world war.”
To that end, Mr. Barr said that communist China “produces nearly all” the precursors used to make fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that have ravaged the United States for several years.
Were the regime to simply enforce the law, he said, the vast majority of synthetic opioids being trafficked into the U.S. would dry up.
“They are knee-deep and actively sponsoring, encouraging, and facilitating the production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors for distribution in the United States,” Mr. Barr said.
“Without China’s production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors, there would be no fentanyl crisis in the United States and the mass slaughter would effectively stop.”
Relatedly, the Select Committee’s report found evidence that the United States’ law enforcement counterparts in China tasked with tracking and stopping the flow of such drugs were not taking any action to curb the flow. On some occasions, they actually warned drug producers about U.S. investigations.
The CCP even went so far as to increase subsidies for the illegal drugs while negotiating with U.S. officials during the opioid crisis in 2019 and 2020.
In all, the report found 31,000 instances of Chinese companies selling illegal drugs with clear indications or guarantees that they would bypass customs into the United States or elsewhere.
One aide for the Select Committee told reporters that the regime was effectively boosting the sale of illegal synthetic narcotics with the same tools it uses to boost international sales of electric vehicles, and that subsidized narcotics sold 10 times better on the international market.
Among those drugs being subsidized, the aide said, was 3-Methylfentanyl, which was reportedly used as a chemical weapon in a 2002 terrorist attack in Moscow.
“The CCP is currently sponsoring a criminal act under its own laws that subsidize the death and addiction of Americans and others worldwide,” the aide said.
