Chinese Communist officials and state media reacted angrily on Thursday to U.S. sanctions against Chinese firms for their alleged role in the fentanyl drug crisis.
President Joe Biden imposed the sanctions against 4 Chinese pillmakers by executive order on Wednesday, to “assist interfere with the global supply chain and the monetary networks that enable synthetic opioids and precursor chemicals to reach the United States,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it.
Likewise subjected to Treasury Department action was an individual named Chuen Fat Yip, referred to as “one of the largest, if not the largest, manufacturers of anabolic steroids in the world.” Yip, a 68-year-old local of the now-infamous city of Wuhan, apparently delivered countless dollars’ worth of fentanyl components from Shanghai and Hong Kong to illicit consumers worldwide.
Among the shipments traced to Yip’s operation included 24 kilograms of fentanyl precursors. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Company (DEA), one kilogram (2.2 pounds.) of fentanyl can eliminate up to 500,000 individuals.
Federal drug charges were filed versus Yip on Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s workplace in the Northern District of Texas, which seized an estimated $2.3 million in cryptocurrency from Yip’s digital wallet in November.
“This defendant apparently made millions making and dispersing anabolic steroids and fentanyl precursors to American customers. The Justice Department will pursue drug offenders to the outermost reaches of the world if that’s what it requires to stem the tide of the drug epidemic,” said U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham.
“I think it’s very simple that a great deal of the precursors to synthetic opioids originate in China, and it was important for us to send out a signal on that front,” a Biden administration official said Wednesday, as estimated by the UK Guardian.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin denounced the U.S. actions at a press conference on Thursday, sneering that Americans were attempting to move the blame for their own drug dependency to China.
“We advise the U.S. to respect the truths, look more to itself for the reasons for the fentanyl abuse problem, and objectively and relatively assess the efforts made by China, rather than blaming other nations,” he said.
Wang insisted China’s “efforts and accomplishments” on drug prevention are “apparent to the worldwide community.”
China’s state-run Global Times knocked the Biden administration for “passing the dollar to China” rather of handling the U.S. drug problem:
With drug addiction involving an artificial opioid referred to as fentanyl becoming one of the fast-growing causes of death in the US, there has actually been an ongoing misconception that the US believes its fentanyl abuse crisis is a result of Chinese companies producing or offering the drug. It is not uncommon to see American politicians and media outlets implicating China of selling fentanyl or precursor chemicals that wind up on US shores.
With an entrenched predisposition versus China, the United States is utilized to blaming Beijing for practically whatever. And the fentanyl issue is no exception. Yet, it must be clarified that the United States fentanyl abuse crisis does not stem from China, and is actually a social issue in the United States. It is clear that some American pharmaceutical business put their own financial interests above public health by actively motivating individuals to use prescription fentanyl a couple of years ago, resulting in the fast spread of the fentanyl addiction.
The Global Times faulted the U.S. federal government for not officially regulating fentanyl as strictly as China and boasted authoritarian Beijing could easily resolve the drug crisis American democracy seems defenseless versus:
With 5 percent of the worldwide population, the US consumes about 80 percent of the world’s opioids. Isn’t it obvious where the roots of the US fentanyl abuse crisis lies? It is an overall governance failure of the United States federal government, a result of the irresponsible extravagance of the substance abuse by the federal and state governments. If something like this occurred in China, authorities would have been held to account layer by layer.
Contrary to these protestations from the Chinese Communist Celebration, drug abuse experts have explained China’s mass production of fentanyl as an intentional chemical weapons attack on the United States. They note China boasts of passing hard laws versus fentanyl production, but the huge Chinese surveillance state and ruthless security apparatus seemingly do nothing to really prevent production and worldwide distribution of the drug.
The U.S. Centers for Illness Control (CDC) reported in November that drug overdoses have reached a record high during Joe Biden’s presidency, driven largely by fentanyl.
According to U.S. security and police, Chinese “drug kingpins” manufacture fentanyl at really high levels of purity– and lethality– then utilize Mexican cartels to slip their item throughout the U.S. border. As the charges filed against Yip in Texas suggest, cryptocurrency has actually become a preferred financial instrument for handling this deadly trade.