The fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. is intensely tragic for individuals and damaging to society, but it is not without precedent. For nearly a century, widespread Chinese addiction to opium destroyed millions of lives and ravaged a great nation.
China’s history of being blighted by drugs can provide the U.S. with insights into ways to fight the human and societal damage that fentanyl inflicts on Americans today.
A key feature of China’s opium epidemic is that it was state-sponsored. In the early 19th century, British merchants wanted to sell Indian-grown opium in China, while Chinese officials attempted to crack down on this illegal trade. Rather than aiming to constrain the opium trade, however, the British government not only encouraged but advanced it.
Much like today’s governments, Britain was concerned about persistently high trade deficits with China and was desperate to find commodities whose sale in China would offset those deficits. In 1839, Chinese authorities used force to confiscate and destroy millions of pounds of opium from British merchants. The result was the “First Opium War,” in which Britain won a resounding victory.
As a consequence, Chinese ports were forcibly opened to British trade, including the opium trade. China was also compelled to accept a series of other impositions, from the loss of Hong Kong to an inability to prosecute crimes committed by British subjects.
The Chinese government today considers this the beginning of the “Century of Humiliation,” in which foreign powers swarmed over a weak, drug-addled China, mistreating its people.
Twenty years later, China lost the Second Opium War, in which French, Russian and a few American forces participated alongside the British. China was compelled to accept full legalization of the opium trade, as well as additional territorial losses, financial compensation to the victors and many other concessions.
While there were many factors contributing to Chinese weakness at this time, opium addiction accelerated and intensified China’s decline.
The Chinese Communist Party prides itself on having largely eliminated the scourge of opium consumption since it seized power in 1949. The communists have not, however, stopped the production and distribution of fentanyl precursors that are used to make fentanyl in Mexico for export to the U.S.
A question that could reasonably be asked is whether the scale of this illegal activity reflects China’s limited interest in curtailing it, particularly given that relatively few Chinese appear to be consuming fentanyl.
Some Chinese officials may not perceive the value in undertaking the sustained, resource-intensive efforts needed to counter illegal drug flows. The trade is so lucrative that those involved in it are highly motivated and well-equipped to find ways to bypass crackdowns, contributing to a perpetual game of measures and countermeasures, like the U.S.’s half-century “war on drugs.”
The motivation to wage such a war at multiple levels of government may be diminished by the fact that the net effect of those drug flows is to enrich China while damaging Americans and their country.
The Chinese Communist Party is obviously quite aware of how devastating drugs can be at a societal level, given its repeated invocation of the “Century of Humiliation” narrative. Some in China who have been deeply inculcated with this narrative might also view fostering drug addiction as a form of slightly misdirected vengeance.
While Britain, not America, was primarily responsible for inflicting drugs on China, the U.S. was also not blameless. Not only did it play a role in the Second Opium War and subsequent encroachments on Chinese territory, but there were also U.S. merchants involved in the opium trade, who operated in China under unequal treaties imposed by the U.S. government.
There is no explicit proof that the Chinese Communist Party is deliberately conducting or permitting the export of fentanyl or fentanyl precursors through malign neglect, though a recent report highlights the Chinese government’s tolerance of select organized crime networks.
It is clear, however, that a totalitarian government — one that has been ruthless in punishing drug dealers, other criminals and dissidents inside China — has not been as successful in countering drug flows from its shores.
As the U.S. and other nations engage diplomatically with China, communicating the importance of the drug issue may help to encourage China to pressure its own authorities to attenuate the flow.
Amid the vast array of issues that the U.S. and China continually discuss, even geopolitical rivals can find common ground, trading concessions on one issue for a willingness to demonstrably address another. By more firmly pressing the Chinese Communist Party on this topic, the U.S. could potentially work with China to help diminish the extent of the fentanyl epidemic.
David Luckey is a senior international and defense researcher and Scott Savitz is a senior engineer at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution.