MADE IN CHINA –
July 12, 2023 – After Blinken left Beijing, the US justice department filed criminal charges against Chen and Wang, along with six other Chinese nationals and four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies.
China described the arrests as illegal and demanded the immediate release of its citizens.
“China could very likely react with great anger and see this as a dirty trick, a betrayal of whatever was agreed in Blinken’s trip,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and expert on global drugs policy.
Some had hoped that fentanyl control was one area in which Beijing and Washington might find common ground, outside more adversarial areas such as trade and technology.
But from Beijing’s perspective, all avenues of cooperation are subordinate to geopolitical negotiations. In August 2022, after the then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China officially suspended all dialogue.
That means that Washington and Beijing are not able to share intelligence on supply chains linked to criminal gangs or money laundering investigations.
