Beijing has warned citizens of the risk of police entrapment in the US after drug firms and staff were charged with importing the ingredients for the opioid fentanyl.
"Chinese nationals who travel to the US should be more vigilant, and beware of falling into US snares and arrest-entrapment,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cautioned in a travel advisory posted on Monday.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on June 23 that it had arrested eight executives and employees of four different Chinese pharmaceutical companies for allegedly importing "fentanyl precursor chemicals" into new York State.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) claimed it had seized 200 kilos of the chemicals, "that could contain enough deadly doses to kill 25 million Americans."
US Attorney-General Merrick Garland, a member of President Joe Biden's cabinet, boasted in the statement that the DoJ was not just combatting Mexico narcotics "cartels" but also "stopping the Chinese chemical companies that are supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to manufacture deadly fentanyl."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry hit back on June 24, accusing US officials of "ensnaring" and "arbitrary detention" of its citizens, adding that the transactions in question took place outside the US.
"US law enforcement personnel ensnared Chinese nationals through 'sting operation' in a third country and blatantly pressed charges against Chinese entities and individuals," a ministry spokesperson said. "This is typical arbitrary detention and unilateral sanction, which is completely illegal."
The ministry added that despite China's active participation in international anti-narcotrafficking efforts, the US had "imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese counter-narcotics institutions and then openly slandered China’s counter-narcotics efforts and illegally sanctioned Chinese companies."
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid — analogous to codeine, morphine or heroine — prescribed medically as a high-strength painkiller. But the US has seen an epidemic of abuse of the drug, which is now produced in illegal "street" laboratories. Overdoses claimed more than 110,000 American lives in 2022.
Imperial China was itself weakened and colonised by the Western powers, including the US, after the British empire forced it to allow the import of addictive opium from India in the 19th-century Opium Wars. That allowed Britain to obtain tea plants from China, ending the country's monopoly on the valuable export.
As a result, modern China takes a hard line on drug trafficking and imposes the death penalty on smugglers.