Please, stop what you're doing and watch this video. The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has laid out an alarming case against the government in Beijing, which the evidence shows is directly and willfully complicit in America's deadly fentanyl crisis. I think many of us already knew that a lot of the ingredients for the drug originated in China, and assumed the Communist regime committed to supplanting the liberal world order (Chairman Xi has said that it's his regime's role to overthrow the liberal democratic system) wouldn't do much to stop the senseless death within the borders of their top competitor. But the CCP's involvement is more direct and sinister than that. Just as the US government must rein in the glaring TikTok data security and mass propaganda problem, the fentanyl pipeline issue is lethal on a mass scale, and requires urgent action. See how each assertion in this social media indictment of the Chinese government -- 'promotes, protects, benefits' -- is backed up by reality:
FINDINGS RELEASED: Our bipartisan investigation reveals, for the FIRST time, that the CCP actively PROMOTES the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. through government programs, PROTECTS fentanyl trafficking and directly BENEFITS from the crisis.
— Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (@committeeonccp) April 16, 2024
See the evidence for yourself… 👇 pic.twitter.com/TxO7KRhXVe
Approximately 200 Americans die from fentanyl every single day, the equivalent of a sizable commercial airline jet crashing on a daily basis. One element that stood out to me in the clip above is how China ensures that its lucrative deadly drug trade is exported to foreign countries, while strictly forbidden internally. It's like how their domestic version of TikTok is tightly controlled for their youth, with time limits and mandated educational content -- and how during the initial onset of the Wuhan lab-originated global pandemic, they clamped down on information and spread disinformation to the rest of the world. For good and evil (and it's often evil), you might describe the CCP's posture as fanatically 'China First,' even or especially if that means sowing division and death in America. Here is a partial summary of the committee's findings, detailed in a scathing new report:
The Select Committee’s investigation has established that the PRC government, under the control of the CCP:
1. Directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. Many of these substances are illegal under the PRC’s own laws and have no known legal use worldwide. Like its export tax rebates for legitimate goods, the CCP’s subsidizing of illegal drugs incentivizes international synthetic drug sales from the PRC. The CCP has never disclosed this program.
2. Gave monetary grants and awards to companies openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics. There are even examples of some of these companies enjoying site visits from provincial PRC government officials who complimented them for their impact on the provincial economy.
3. Holds ownership interest in several PRC companies tied to drug trafficking. This includes a PRC government prison connected to human rights abuses owning a drug trafficking chemical company and a publicly traded PRC company hosting thousands of solicitations of open drug trafficking on its sites.
4. Fails to prosecute fentanyl and precursor manufacturers. Rather than investigating drug traffickers, PRC security services have not cooperated with U.S. law enforcement and have even notified targets of U.S. investigations when they received requests for assistance.
5. Allows the open sale of fentanyl precursors and other illicit materials on the extensively monitored and controlled PRC internet. A review of just seven e-commerce sites found over 31,000 instances of PRC companies selling illicit chemicals with obvious ties to drug trafficking. Undercover communications with PRC drug trafficking companies (whose identities were provided to U.S. law enforcement) revealed an eagerness to engage in clearly illicit drug sales with no fear of reprisal.
6. Censors content about domestic drug sales but leaves export-focused narcotics content untouched. The PRC has censorship triggers for domestic drug sales (e.g., “fentanyl + cash on delivery”), but no such triggers exist to monitor or prevent the export of illicit narcotics out of the PRC.
7. Strategically and economically benefits from the fentanyl crisis. The fentanyl crisis has helped CCP-tied Chinese organized criminal groups become the world’s premier money launderers, enriched the PRC’s chemical industry, and had a devastating impact on Americans.
One thing that strikes me about the video is its inclusion of a quote from a treatise written by two Chinese military strategists. In a passage discussing the importance of "aymmetrical" means of warfare against enemies, one line stands out:
Aside from what we have discussed above, we can point out a number of other means and methods used to fight a non-military war, some of which already exist and some of which may exist in the future, for example psychological warfare that causes intimidation to the enemy and break down his will; smuggling warfare that throws markets into confusion and attacking economic order; media warfare that manipulates audio and video to guide public opinion; drug warfare that cause disasters in other countries and make huge profits...
Media warfare "to guide public opinion" in foreign nations, and "drug warfare that cause disasters in other countries and make huge profits." Hello, TikTok. Hello, fentanyl. This playbook appears to be well underway. The question is whether we are a serious enough nation to do anything about it. They're dead serious. I'll leave you with former Attorney General Bill Barr testifying about how the CCP is "knee deep" in America's fentanyl crisis:
“The CCP are not just bystanders. They are prime movers.
— Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (@committeeonccp) April 16, 2024
They are knee-deep in actively sponsoring, encouraging and facilitating the production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors for distribution in the US.”— Former AG Bill Barr pic.twitter.com/jLYlXICWmx
On America's Newsroom, Barr expanded on these thoughts:
"The question all along is, are they just bystanders watching this traffic? Just don't want to interfere because we're the ones being hurt or are they active? Sins of commission. And it's clear from this report that they're knee deep in it. They are complicit in the trafficking and they're driving the trafficking. They're incentivizing the trafficking. And I ask you, what why do you think they're doing that? I think a big part of it is strategic. That is they believe this weakens the United States and it tells the world that we're a decadent society and a disciplined society like China's the future and it distracts us. And so if it's bad for us, it's good for them...The Chinese and the Mexicans give us happy talk. They're not cooperating. They're both complicit in in the trafficking, in my opinion. And we have to start getting much tougher with them."
It couldn't be clearer that we have to get much tougher. But will we?