Insiders say fentanyl is at the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s bid to take revenge on the West, and America makes a perfect enemy.
Tensions have been simmering between the United States and communist China as the two countries escalate tariffs on each other’s imports. Meanwhile, Beijing’s rhetoric has become increasingly confrontational.
In early March, the Chinese Embassy in Washington shared a social media post from its Foreign Ministry, repeating its message: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”
President Donald Trump has warned that, while the United States does not seek war with China, it is “very well-equipped to handle it.”
Trump has imposed an additional 20 percent tariff on all goods made in China, citing a national emergency on the continued trafficking of fentanyl—a deadly opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine—into the United States.
To this day, China remains the primary source of fentanyl precursors, which are shipped to Mexico, where they’re manufactured into the illicit drug. It is then smuggled into the United States mainly via the southern border.
In response to Trump’s added tariff, Beijing imposed an additional 15 percent tariff on U.S. coal and natural gas and an extra 10 percent on agricultural equipment and pickup trucks.
The communist regime has also called the fentanyl epidemic the United States’ “own problem“ and has cast the U.S. tariffs as ”blackmail.”
Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at Peking University in China who now lives in Australia, said the American opioid epidemic is far from the self-inflicted wound the CCP has suggested it is.
The Chinese regime has played a significant role in America’s fentanyl crisis, and blaming the United States for it has long been Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s strategy, Yuan told NTD, Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, in a recent episode of the Chinese-language program “Pinnacle View.”
Yuan, who has insider access to senior CCP leaders, said Xi has consistently given internal directives during both Trump’s first and second terms that Beijing must maintain the narrative that the drug crises in both Europe and the United States are not linked to China.
Yuan said the regime has also been directed by Xi to assert that China makes the chemical precursors legally, and that if they are converted into deadly drugs and smuggled into the United States or Europe, it is not China’s responsibility.
The China expert further stated that fentanyl is at the core of Xi’s bid to “take revenge” on the West. He said Xi blames the West for subjecting China to a century of humiliation as a result of the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century. During that time, China had to sign a series of unequal treaties that ceded Chinese territory and opened Chinese ports to foreign control.
“It is precisely due to Xi’s directives that we are now seeing a dramatic increase in both the production of fentanyl precursors in China and the export of these chemicals, fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States,” Yuan said.
Fentanyl overdose deaths have become a national crisis, taking more than 200 American lives per day, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2023 alone, about 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdose, a staggering 23-fold increase from 10 years ago.
Today, accidental drug overdoses are the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. On a more positive note, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths decreased by more than 20 percent in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The fentanyl crisis has become a key concern among American voters and has become one of the driving forces behind the dynamics of U.S.–China relations, said China expert Alexander Liao.
He said relations between Beijing and Washington have fundamentally changed. During the Biden administration, the two countries went through a diplomatic “ice age,” when senior-level official communication froze for approximately 10 months in 2022 and 2023. However, Liao believes the confrontation has now escalated to a new level.
“Whether it’s trade or other aspects, the United States and China have basically turned against each other,” Liao told The Epoch Times.
“Little noise but fierce action” is how he categorizes the current state between Beijing and Washington, in contrast to the “big arguments and little action” going on between the United States and Europe.
“The politics play differently between enemies and friends,” he said.
US Makes Perfect Enemy for Chinese Regime
Over the past decade, China saw significant economic growth. Its nominal GDP is now over three-quarters of that of the United States, according to data from the World Bank. When measured by purchasing power, China’s economy surpassed that of the United States in 2016.
Xi rose in the CCP ranks a few years before that and in 2013 took over its leadership.
According to Yuan, Xi’s communist nature drove him to immediately cash in on China’s economic strength to establish a foreign policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at expanding communist totalitarianism around the world.
Under the guise of infrastructure development, the $1 trillion geopolitical platform snatches up other countries’ natural resources, including critical minerals for computer chip production, and expands its use of their ports for its own civil and military purposes.
Xi’s hallmark political slogan is “realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Under this narrative, such a victory doesn’t come without setbacks and obstacles.
Xi’s drive for Chinese dominance begins with the country’s decline 200 years ago. In the CCP’s books, the West is to blame for turning China from a winner to a loser in the world. The communist regime’s education system and propaganda frequently emphasize the Opium Wars as the beginning of the “Century of Humiliation.”
Xi has said that taking back Hong Kong and Macau from the United Kingdom and Portugal, respectively, “washed off the humiliation of a century,” and that the next step is to unify Taiwan with the Chinese mainland.
Despite the appearance of promoting nationalism, Liao said, Xi’s logic remains rooted in communist doctrine: the global spread of communism—or in the Party’s parlance, to “stake the red flag all over the world.”
This naturally makes the United States the CCP’s No. 1 enemy, Liao said. As Taiwan’s protector and leader of the current world order, America poses the single largest roadblock to Xi’s plans.
The CCP has used China’s decades of rapid economic growth to justify its rule. However, Xi’s draconian COVID-19 lockdown measures exacerbated long-running problems in its debt-fueled, supply-driven economy. After the lockdowns were lifted, the plunging property market and cash-strapped local governments have left the economy in stagnation.
Instigating resentment against an external enemy is another tactic the CCP uses to bolster its power. The United States thus becomes the perfect target, and the Party can propagandize its efforts to push back against it.
Xi’s End Game
Xi’s end game, Yuan said, is to “replace the United States as the underwriter and enforcer of the world order.” Yuan said the two men used to drink together when Xi was still a provincial-level power figure.
A year after Xi took over China, the death toll from fentanyl overdoses in the United States took off. By 2017, annual deaths reached 28,000. By 2023, the number had ballooned to 75,000.
In 2017, when Beijing knew China had surpassed the United States in GDP measured by purchasing power, Xi and his cohorts believed that the “American problem”—replacing the United States as the world’s superpower—would be solved within a decade, according to Liao.
Liao’s insider sources in Beijing told him that an optimistic mood rose within the CCP, resulting in party leaders holding a dismissive attitude toward the United States.
“In that climate, the hardliners within the CCP essentially set themselves on an irreversible path of confrontation with the United States,” Liao said.
America’s failure in curbing its drug epidemic has also bolstered Xi’s pride and confidence, Yuan said, adding that Xi sees the U.S. fentanyl crisis as proof that “the East is rising, the West is declining.”
According to Liao’s sources, during Trump’s first state visit to China in November 2017, a high-ranking CCP official told Trump, “You [the United States] just need to provide us with raw materials and a consumer market for our manufacturing.”
A Beijing insider told Liao that this encounter prompted Trump to initiate tariffs on China as soon as he returned to Washington. The source said that the Chinese official’s arrogance and condescending tone likely left Trump feeling deeply uneasy that U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing was getting out of hand. The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
In January 2018, Trump began setting tariffs on Chinese imports to reduce the trade imbalance and force China to stop its theft of U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property.
Two years later, Beijing and Washington signed a phase one trade agreement under which China promised to buy more U.S. products.
Two months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
On the first day of his second term, Trump ordered a trade policy investigation to be conducted by April 1. The study singles out China for evaluation of the fulfillment of the phase one trade agreement and review of any unfair or unbalanced trade practices.
Trump has been speaking of April 2 as America’s “liberation day,” on which he will impose reciprocal tariffs to level the field with all its trade partners. A likely outcome is that the White House will impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports.
The Chinese economy is weaker than it was during Trump’s first term and more reliant on exports.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the first U.S. politician to visit Beijing since Trump’s second term, conveyed Trump’s message to senior Chinese leaders, calling for “decisive action from China to stop the flow of fentanyl precursors.” On March 23, he reiterated the U.S. demand in an interview with Bloomberg, “It’ll be difficult to have any conversation about tariffs and non-tariff barriers until the fentanyl precursor issue is resolved.”
Regardless of what concessions Beijing proposes to Trump at a potential Trump–Xi summit in June, the two countries are on an “inevitable” collision course, said Yuan.
“It is not a temporary conflict sparked by a single event, whether it’s tariffs or any other specific issues,” he said. “The confrontation is fundamental and unavoidable, driven by larger, long-term forces.”