Despite Beijing listing all fentanyl-related substances as controlled narcotics in 2019, regulating their production and sale, Washington is using its belated crackdown on the synthetic opioid as part of its campaign targeting China.

Washington has been focusing its attention on China-based suppliers of processor chemicals for the drug. Despite these chemicals having legitimate uses and being legal to trade, it alleges that Beijing is not doing enough to help monitor or regulate purchases from buyers who are using the Chinese-made ingredients to manufacture illegal drugs overseas.

That this is part of Washington's broader campaign against China is clear from a brief issued by the US side in August 2021. Noting that Beijing had fulfilled its pledge to the US to place all forms of fentanyl and its analogues on a regulatory schedule, the US-China Economic and Security and Review Commission went on to claim that "Chinese traffickers" were using various strategies to circumvent the new regulations. This claim has now been inflated by Washington into the allegation that "PRC companies are selling vast quantities of precursor chemicals to the drug cartels", as though all Chinese chemical companies were involved in illicit synthetic drug production and trafficking.

In a move aimed at bolstering those allegations, the US Justice Department announced on Friday that four China-based companies and eight Chinese nationals had been charged for allegedly supplying the precursor chemicals for the purpose of creating the deadly drug for distribution in the US. This is the first time Washington has targeted Chinese companies for shipping precursor chemicals to the US, rather than Mexico.

Commenting on the US move, the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out that China has actively carried out international anti-drug cooperation and taken the lead in regulating all types of fentanyl substances worldwide, playing an important role in preventing the illegal manufacture, trafficking and abuse of fentanyl. It lamented that instead of acknowledging these efforts, the US side has unjustifiably imposed sanctions on the Chinese agency in charge of drug control, is smearing China on the drug control issue and illegally imposed sanctions on Chinese enterprises, and now entraps and indicts Chinese citizens.

Rather than trying to politicize the fentanyl issue as part of its campaign against China, the Joe Biden administration should see what it can learn from China's fight against drugs. China has set a good example with its "zero-tolerance" to drug abuse.

While it is easy for Washington to pass the buck to China for its fentanyl crisis amid the anti-China hysteria that has been whipped up in the US, that move won't help the country address the problem.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that about 110,000 people died in the US from fentanyl abuse in 2022. It has also said that fentanyl is a primary cause of death of those aged between 18 and 49 in the country. The US should stop politicizing its fentanyl problem to attack China and instead actually address the root causes of the problem, which stem from the same fertile soil as its other social ills.