President Biden is expected to announce a controversial deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at slowing the deadly flood of fentanyl across the United States.
The two leaders are expected to announce the deal when they meet Wednesday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, one of the cities hardest hit by what has become the deadliest drug in the US.
“We hope to see some progress on that issue next week,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday, ahead of the meeting.
“That can then open the door to further collaboration on other issues where we not only manage things, but we actually deliver tangible results,” he added.
China’s Foreign Ministry said it is willing to carry out anti-drug-trafficking measures with the US on the basis of “equality and mutual respect,” according to Bloomberg.
Under the terms of the deal, China will crack down on chemical companies that make compounds used to make fentanyl, sources familiar with the negotiations told Bloomberg.
President Biden and President Xi Jinping are expected to announce an agreement to slow the flood of fentanyl into the US.REUTERS Biden and Xi Jinping shake hands as they meet outside the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali November 14, 2022.AFP via Getty Images
In exchange, Biden would lift sanctions on China’s Forensic Police Institute – which the Commerce Department restricted from accessing US technology in 2020 over allegations it was involved in the oppression of Uyghurs.
However, some experts warn that the deal could fall apart if the Biden administration continues to criticize Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party – while many Republicans see it as part of Biden making “repeated concessions” to Beijing.
China’s embassy in Washington has also criticized the move, with a spokesman saying in May: “US sanctions against Chinese companies and people will add more obstacles to China-US anti-narcotics cooperation.”
Chinese businesses supply Mexican drug cartels with chemicals used to make fentanyl — an opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
It is the deadliest drug in the United States today, with more than 150 people dying from overdoses related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Such excess deaths increased more than sevenfold between 2015 and 2021, the National Center for Health Statistics said.
Chinese businesses supply Mexican drug cartels with chemicals used to make fentanyl.AP Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the United States today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.REUTERS
The drug problem has burdened several American cities, including San Francisco, where the upcoming summit will be held.
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Mayor London Breed has even said he blames fentanyl for his city’s decline and exacerbating the city’s homeless crisis.
“Fentanyl has really destroyed our city like no other drug we’ve ever experienced in my lifetime,” he told Bloomberg.
“I will ask him [Xi] to work with the US and to make sure that resources sent out of China, that go into the US or Mexico are cut off as much as possible.”
But experts warn that the deal could collapse if the Biden administration continues to criticize Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party.
“The China deal has an unspoken condition: Cancel if you criticize Xi and the Communist Party,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“If the Biden administration is not pro-China in 2024, enforcement of the fentanyl deal will fade.”
Republicans on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party have also warned Biden against continuing his “repeated concessions” to Beijing in upcoming one-on-one meetings with the Chinese president.
The drug problem has burdened several American cities, including San Francisco, where the upcoming summit will be held.Terry Schmitt/UPI/Shutterstock Under the deal, China will crack down on chemical companies that make compounds used to produce fentanyl.ZUMAPRESS .com
They listed 10 demands they suggested Biden make to Xi “before the end of the APEC summit.”
The demands include the release of all US citizens wrongfully detained in China, an end to “all near-miss collisions and unsafe intercepts” with American forces at sea and in the air and a major program suspension of the PRC’s forced labor program in Xinjiang.”
Other demands include Xi allowing “all US citizens who are banned from leaving [China] immediately”; establishing a “‘know your customer’ requirement” on shipments of fentanyl substances in China; stop “all military operations in the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone,” which Beijing does not respect; and to cease “all present and future interference with Philippine vessels” in the South China Sea.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
