For some reason, FBI director Kash Patel went to China to talk about fentanyl.
“While we at…the Department of Justice have been fighting hard to seize and stop drug traffickers, we must attack fentanyl precursors, the ingredients necessary to make this lethal drug. That was the sole purpose of my trip to China: to eliminate these precursors,” Patel said.
“This was the first time an FBI director has been to China in over a decade and received the audience with his counterpart to address this matter directly, and again, thanks to President Trump’s direct engage with President Xi, the government of China committed fully to my engagement there on the ground in Beijing at a level never seen before.”
Patel added that Beijing has now “fully designated and listed all 13 precursors utilized to make fentanyl” and agreed to what he described as further “control” of “seven chemical subsidiaries that are also utilized to produce this lethal drug, effective immediately.”
“These substances are now banned, and they will no longer be utilized by the Mexican drug trafficking organizations…to make this drug,” he said.
Mission accomplished, because the Chinese government has again made a promise about stemming the flow of fentanylprecursors.
It may keep the promise this time around, but Grant Newsham doubts it (Washington Times, November 26, 2025).
[Patel] got a promise from the Chinese to declare 13 fentanyl precursors illegal and to control seven other chemicals. So what? They have done this before. In a 2018 meeting with Mr. Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to restrict all fentanyl-type substances. Mr. Trump declared it a “game-changer.” Yet unsurprisingly, the drugs kept arriving in America….
If Chinese leaders wanted to stop the flow of Chinese-origin fentanyl (precursors or otherwise), they could. They have a surveillance state George Orwell couldn’t have imagined.
They have no incentive to do so. Besides the dead from fentanyl, maybe 10 times as many people have been injured and often turned into zombies. Many victims are of military service age.
China is severely damaging its “main enemy” without firing a shot. Punishment from the U.S. government? None.
If it were a choice, though, between shutting down the surveillance state that Orwell could not have imagined and shutting down the flow of fentanyl precursors, I think I’d choose the former.
