Yu Haibin: ‘Since the opium wars, in China, a rejection of drugs runs through our veins’

The deputy director of the National Narcotics Control Commission Office waits in a room in a hotel attached to the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. It is Monday and Yu Haibin, an important figure in China’s fight against drugs, receives EL PAÍS to talk about the fentanyl epidemic, a synthetic drug that kills more than 70,000 people every year in the United States. For years, Washington has been calling for greater cooperation from Beijing to stop the scourge. China is home to a giant chemical industry that produces compounds that can be combined to create fentanyl, an opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. Dozens of Chinese companies and citizens have been sanctioned or are wanted by the U.S. justice system for allegedly being linked to the trafficking of this drug and for selling the precursors with which to manufacture it. Many of these chemicals pass through Mexico, where they are transformed into the drug that eventually wreaks havoc in cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia.

With political tension at an all-time high, the issue has been a subject of dispute between the two superpowers. In the interview, conducted through an interpreter, Yu, 52, argues that Washington has not presented legal proof that any Chinese citizen has committed a crime. But he asserts that, following the November meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco, “cooperation” between the two countries “has been fully restored.” He displays “empathy” toward the United States, but also points out that the roots of the addiction problem lie in that country. In the People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, history plays a key role in the rejection of narcotics: “China suffered greatly from the opium wars, so our rejection of drugs runs through our veins,” he says, referring to the addiction that swept through 19th-century imperial China and was at the root of its conflicts with the colonial powers.

Yu dresses soberly, wearing the blue jacket over a white shirt typical of government cadres. He speaks slowly for over an hour. He has prepared his answers thoroughly — a request was made to send the questions to be discussed ahead of time — although he answers questions that go off script. Three officials accompany him in the interview. Currently the deputy director, he joined the Ministry of Public Security, as the chief of police, after graduating from university and has spent 10 years working on narcotics control, linked among other things to chemical precursors and the so-called New Psychoactive Substances (NPS). He believes that his work requires “finding a balance between not influencing the industrial use of chemicals and preventing and combating their illicit diversion.” This dilemma that a chemical and industrial powerhouse like China faces sums up much of the fentanyl problem: it’s a regulated synthetic drug, but one that can be manufactured using unregulated precursor chemicals.

Yu gives the example of the past year to explain the dilemma. In 2023, he recounts, the United States “unilaterally” brought five fentanyl-related prosecutions, sanctions and arrests affecting 31 Chinese companies and 39 Chinese nationals. But according to Beijing’s investigations, the material and substances involved are “not controlled” by China, nor are they “cataloged” by China, the United Nations or the United States. In other words, their trade is not prohibited. In addition, the evidence has been “obtained primarily by U.S. agents posing as customers to buy them”; in some cases, the companies involved “have also been sanctioned,” even though they only published sales ads or accepted inquiries without actually conducting transactions. China “has found no evidence that the sanctioned companies and citizens have violated Chinese laws,” he responds. “If the United States can provide evidence obtained through legal channels under Chinese law that these companies and citizens violated Chinese laws, then China will crack down under Chinese law.”

Deputy Director Yu acknowledges that the “difficulties” regarding the “control” of precursors extend to the entire international community. This “chemical” has “two faces”: it can be used “for illegal trafficking” and the manufacture of drugs; but it is also used “in industrial and agricultural production, and in everyday life, including scientific research.” As the largest producer of chemicals on the planet, the Asian giant is in the eye of the storm. But Yu cites international conventions to explain that the mere fact that a substance is used to produce narcotics does not mean that it should automatically be regulated. Its other uses must be taken into account. China’s approach, he continues, involves controlling these chemicals to prevent them from being lost through illegal channels, through warnings, giving prominence to industry associations and exercising “corporate self-discipline.” He adds that “we must not only combat illegality, but also protect legality.”

Over 6,500 drug cases

China has busted 6,533 drug cases of over 1 kilogram and broken up 31,000 drug gangs in the past five years. The Asian giant often talks about the strictness of its regulations to explain why there are hardly any known cases linked to fentanyl in the country. “We maintain a high-pressure stance of special crackdowns when it comes to law enforcement.”

The November summit between Biden and Xi in San Francisco has changed the situation. Yu values the “important consensus” reached in the fight against fentanyl trafficking. Right after the meeting, Washington lifted the sanctions it had imposed on China’s National Narcotics Laboratory and the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science, “removing previous obstacles” to cooperation. An anti-drug working group has also been established. “China-U.S. cooperation has been fully restored,” he says. The next milestones involve cooperation “in all areas of substance management, including fentanyl,” a “comprehensive collaboration that includes sharing intelligence, case investigation and technical exchange,” Yu says.

“The Chinese people empathize with the damage that drugs have caused to the American people,” Yu adds when asked about U.S. accusations of China fueling the opioid crisis. He asserts that with the efforts on Beijing’s part — which range from regulating all types of fentanyl from 2019 to controlling postal shipments — the United States has not found that fentanyl continues to come from China. Still, he notes, Washington imposed sanctions on the aforementioned laboratory and forensic institute. “And the Chinese people’s feelings were severely hurt by [then House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. That’s why we discontinued our narcotics control cooperation with the United States,” he explained.

Despite that empathy, he is categorical: “The problem now facing the United States is rooted in the country itself. It is caused by drug abuse.” Among other things, he notes the million-dollar fines on the pharmaceutical companies responsible for fueling that abuse, such as Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson. “We believe that the fundamental cause is that these companies were profit-driven,” he says. From now on he expects cooperation from the United States “on the basis of equality, mutual respect and mutual trust.” And in reference to the extraterritoriality of U.S. sanctions and prosecutions, he concludes: “We don’t like long-arm jurisdictions.”

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