House report highlights China’s significant contribution to the fentanyl epidemic claiming American lives
The House Select Committee report reveals China’s involvement in the fentanyl crisis, citing “abhorrent” actions violating international laws. It exposes China’s subsidies for illegal fentanyl exports and obstruction of U.S. investigations. The report highlights China’s role in money laundering schemes and undermining law enforcement efforts. It emphasizes the profound impact of China’s actions on global human suffering.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a report on Tuesday detailing its investigation into China’s role in the fentanyl crisis, calling attention to the nation’s “abhorrent” actions and failure to pursue “flagrant” violations of its own laws.
In its investigation, the committee found that China subsidizes the exports of illegal fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics and has thwarted U.S. investigations into illicit fentanyl manufacturers, among other things.
“These actions and omissions are abhorrent, violate the laws of nations, and have led to profound human suffering in the United States and around the world,” the report states.
A majority committee aide told reporters that though the committee knew of the CCP’s involvement in the fentanyl crisis, the purpose of the bipartisan investigation was to uncover the scope of its role.
“The fentanyl trade boosts China’s economy has allowed Chinese organized crime to become the world’s premier money launderers with US law enforcement finding evidence indicating that money laundering schemes involved Chinese government officials and the Chinese Communist Party elite,” the majority aide said.
Part of the investigation involved combing through seven e-commerce websites, a process that turned up over 31,000 instances of nearly 2,050 People’s Republic of China companies selling illegal drugs with clear indications of drug trafficking, the aide said, such as guarantees to bypass customs and accepting cryptocurrency as payment, violating Chinese laws. The committee found that among the 2,048 companies involved in the sales, there were over 1,500 “common linkages,” such as shared phone numbers and addresses. Some of the companies sold both illegal fentanyl and legal chemicals.
The committee also concluded in the report that China subsidized the sale of illegal narcotics overseas through excessive rebates against the country’s value-added tax. The report said that the subsidy program has been in place since at least 2018, when the Chinese government subsidized the sale of at least 17 illegal synthetic narcotics, including 14 “deadly fentanyl analogs” that have no known legal use worldwide.
After initial reporting, the CCP scrubbed the internet for the website that tracks the rebates. However, the committee investigators eventually located the information through the State Taxation Administration, which reports directly to the State Council, the top organ in the PRC government. Searching in English yielded no results, but searching in Mandarin allowed the committee to see “all forms of fentanyl” and the rebates associated with them.
“There is a PRC subsidy program in place that gives money for people to make illegal drugs and send it outside of China,” the majority committee aide said. “These drugs are killing Americans; they’re killing our allies and friends around the world.”
“It is a mass drug trafficking program sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party,” the aide continued.
China officials have also “obfuscated, delayed, and attempted to dissuade” American law enforcement from prosecuting criminal fentanyl traffickers, the report detailed. In May 2018, a Justice Department investigative team met with PRC officials to discuss a drug trafficking organization, but Chinese officials refused to engage with U.S. officials and would not cooperate with a separate investigation.
In the past five years, the United States and its allies have indicted “dozens” of Chinese individuals and entities engaged in fentanyl, and third-party investigative groups have identified “over a hundred more.”
“Despite this evidence—which was established without any access to the PRC’s vast surveillance state—China has thus far done nothing to investigate or prosecute these groups,” the report said.
“The CCP’s failure to investigate these cases—and in many cases effectively notifying criminals of investigations into criminal conduct—is deeply disturbing,” the report continued, adding that the CCP’s failure to enforce its laws is “startling.”
“There’s been a bipartisan call for so many of these bad actor companies in the PRC to be held accountable,” a minority committee aide said during the call.
“And one of the things we really hope this — I certainly hope this investigation accomplishes is providing ammunition for us to go to the CCP, to talk to the CCP, and hold these bad actors accountable. It’s time for these folks to be prosecuted. It’s time for these platforms to take down these blatant sales of drug materials. And its time for us to implement a number of other policy recs in this report,” they said.
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In the report, the committee recommends that the U.S. establish a joint task force, strengthen U.S. sanctions authorities, and enact and use trade and customs measures to restrict trafficking.
The 63-page report comes ahead of a hearing on Tuesday morning, where committee members will hear from members and witnesses, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, former DEA chief of operations Ray Donovan, and David Luckey from RAND Cooperation.
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