Beijing urges Washington to safeguard counternarcotics cooperation

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday that the United States should cherish the goodwill of China and safeguard the hard-won positive situation of China-US cooperation on drug control.

On Monday, United States President-elect Donald Trump said on social media that he has "had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States — But to no avail". He added that the US will be imposing an additional 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports.

The Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China is one of the world's toughest countries on counternarcotics, both in terms of policy and its implementation. Noting that fentanyl is an issue for the US, the ministry spokesperson said that China has given support to the US' response to this issue in the spirit of humanity. "As early as 2019, China officially scheduled all fentanyl-related substances and is the first country in the world to do so," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that China is willing to continue counternarcotics cooperation with the US on the basis of "equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect". "We hope the US will not take China's goodwill for granted and work to ensure that the hard-won positive dynamics will stay in the counternarcotics cooperation," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said it is "a clear fact for all to see" that China has carried out extensive and in-depth counternarcotics cooperation with the US, which has been highly productive.

In November last year, the two countries agreed to establish a working group on counternarcotics cooperation as one of the important points of consensus reached during the meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in San Francisco. A meeting of the working group was held in Washington on July 31, during which senior officials from both sides reviewed progress and discussed the next steps in furthering counternarcotics cooperation.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, cautioned on Monday that there will be losers on all sides if there is a trade war. "China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature. No one will win a trade war or a tariff war," he said in a post on the social media platform X.

According to Liu, China has notified the US of the progress made in US-related law enforcement operations against narcotics, and has responded to US requests for verifying clues in certain cases and taken action.

"All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality," he wrote on X.

Xinhua contributed to this story.