During an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said China is helping the U.S. on fentanyl and “we’ve been active in trying to work with the Chinese to cut down on the flow of precursor chemicals” but responded to a question on if China will acknowledge precursor chemicals for fentanyl come from China by stating that there have been meetings and we’re working on the issue by working with China.
Burns stated that after the meeting between President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco, “we’ve achieved some specific gains. First, on fentanyl, the leading cause of death in the United States of Americans 18-45, we’ve seen the Chinese help us, the government here help our Drug Enforcement Agency.”
Bloomberg Chief North Asia Correspondent Stephen Engle then cut in to ask, “So, it has happened, you’ve had a working group meeting already?”
Burns answered, “Oh yes, we’ve had many meetings. And we’ve been active in trying to work with the Chinese to cut down on the flow of precursor chemicals from black market firms here to the drug cartels in Mexico.”
Engle then cut in to ask, “But they’ve never acknowledged that that was coming from here. Have they acknowledged that?”
Burns responded, “Well, we had an important White House-led delegation here at the end of January. We spent a lot of time with the Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had a meeting in Vienna. So, we are working on fentanyl and trying to reduce the threat of fentanyl by cooperating with China, number one.”
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