Congressional report: Chinese government directly involved in fentanyl production
3-methylfentanyl described as "chemical weapon" in Tuesday's House committee hearing on drugs and China
This past Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a hearing about “The CCP’s Role in the Fentanyl Crisis.” The hearing featured the testimony of former attorney general William Barr, former DEA chief Ray Donovan, and David Luckey of the RAND Corporation. In many ways, the hearing represented a significant shift in rhetoric on fentanyl, particularly regarding the role of the Chinese government in its production.
The committee spent two and a half hours on the hearing and released a 64-page report which explains their findings. As summarized in the report, the committee found that China’s government “provides subsidies to entities that export fentanyl and related precursors, provides support to Chinese companies openly engaged in the fentanyl trade, and owns and supports, in whole or in part, illicit drug manufacturers.”
Journalist Ben Westhoff reported extensively on China’s use of subsidies to provide tax relief for companies that produce fentanyl and its analogues in his book Fentanyl, Inc. in 2019. The committee’s investigation confirmed that Westhoff’s findings are still accurate and found the tax rebates are still in place, despite years of (on-and-off) negotiations between the US and China in the years since.
But the tax rebates are just the beginning. The committee found several companies that produce and distribute fentanyl which were given grants and awards through official government channels. Going a step further, they found that the government of the People’s Republic of China itself holds ownership interest in numerous companies that engage in fentanyl production. The committee identified two different companies involved in fentanyl distribution that are owned by a state prison in China—specifically, the Hebei Province Shijiazhuang Prison. One of them, Yafeng Biological Technology Co., Ltd., brags that their product comes with a 100% guarantee that it “will clear customs.”
Committee chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) listed a number of fentanyl analogues and other substances that the investigation found were subsidized by the Chinese government. Among them was 3-methylfentanyl, which Gallagher explained has been characterized as a chemical weapon. When asked whether this term was appropriate, Donovan, the former DEA chief, replied that it was, explaining that the substance was reportedly used in the Moscow theater crisis in 2002. [Note: Russian Special Forces released a gas form of a mixture of fentanyl analogues to stop a siege involving hundreds of hostages. The gas killed over 150 people, most of them hostages.]
As Representative Neal Dunn (R-FL) pointed out, people “tend to use the term ‘fentanyl’ as shorthand for this massive synthetic drug industry,” when in fact the substances produced include a wide variety of fentanyl analogues, as well as other forms of opioids and other classes of drugs altogether (such as synthetic cannabinoids). The committee’s report also discusses xylazine and nitazenes which have grown increasingly prevalent over the last couple years and are typically sourced from China.
Notably, the committee report cites a text that originally consisted of Chinese military documents that were leaked, translated into English, and published as a book in 1999. Titled Unrestricted Warfare and authored by PLA military strategists Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, the book elaborates a number of unconventional warfare techniques that have evidently been explored by the Chinese military to use against the US. Among them is “drug warfare,” i.e. the strategic use of drug trafficking to “cause disasters” and “make huge profits.” Representative Dan Newhouse (R-WA) described the assortment of tactics that China has used to subsidize and protect fentanyl distribution as a combination of “legal and illegal statecraft.”
The committee report details various ways China has failed to deliver on promises made during negotiations with the US concerning drug policy and specifically regarding fentanyl production. It points out several discrepancies between China’s policy and their actions which have collectively created obstacles for US interests in the area of drug control. The report also includes a number of recommendations which, rather than help the situation, will almost certainly make it worse, being as they are grounded in a completely misguided perspective on the realities of drug use in the 21st century.
The report suggests a combination of sanctions, stronger law enforcement, and stricter policies against fentanyl. To coordinate and facilitate this, the committee proposes creating a counternarcotics task force “that concentrates all non-military elements of state power” to target fentanyl supply chains. In other words: more of the usual bullshit. These suggestions are basically standard procedure for the War on Drugs. Sanctions, harsh laws, and task forces galore have been utilized time and time again, and they have had the combined effect of feeding—not mitigating—the drug war and its tragic consequences.
Clearly, sanctions, tougher laws, and counternarcotics task forces won’t solve the overdose crisis. So I was greatly heartened by a statement that Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) made about the utter necessity of diplomacy if we are to ever actually resolve this crisis:
“The reality is we have a lively and productive debate on this committee about whether we should engage diplomatically with China at all. I’m certainly under no illusions that we can trust the PRC, that the PRC is acting in good faith, or that we can solve all of our problems through discussion. But there is a long history of both Republican and Democratic administrations engaging diplomatically with our adversaries…so we should engage, even as we must be incredibly clear-eyed in doing so, because in this case, that engagement literally saves lives.”
While there has been no shortage of talk about fentanyl on Capitol Hill, and although some congresspeople have individually accused China’s government of complicity, Tuesday’s hearing was the first time (to my knowledge) that a bipartisan congressional committee so clearly and publicly confirmed that the Chinese government does in fact directly support—and even engage in—fentanyl production. Their investigation found that the PRC government does this in multiple ways, including, as we saw, state ownership of multiple companies that sell fentanyl. For this reason, the hearing and its accompanying report indicate an important shift in political dialogue about fentanyl and China.
Before closing, I must note the irony in the committee’s choice of William Barr as a witness. Barr, who began his political career at the CIA, has a long history of entanglement in heinous acts of state-sponsored crime. According to former military intelligence officer Terry Reed, Barr was personally involved in the CIA-backed cocaine trafficking enterprise that flew tons of coke into Arkansas (among other locations) during the governorship of Bill Clinton. Later, as George H. W. Bush’s attorney general, Barr pardoned numerous officials convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal. And, as @TSBurkhardt pointed out on X (formerly known as Twitter), “Barr also let the head of the Mexican armed forces walk on cartel affiliation drug charges under Trump.” (Read more on that here.)