Reporting Highlights
- Pipeline: A Chinese language jail is a part of the pipeline that delivers fentanyl to the U.S., ProPublica present in a evaluation of U.S. and Chinese language paperwork and interviews with investigators.
- Fallout: Opioid overdoses have killed extra People than the variety of U.S. deaths in a number of wars mixed.
- Permissive: Veteran federal brokers instructed ProPublica that China has didn’t cooperate and even interfered with drug investigations; China insists it has cracked down.
These highlights had been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
China’s huge safety equipment shrouds itself in shadows, however the exterior world has caught periodic glimpses of it behind the pale grey partitions of Shijiazhuang jail within the northern province of Hebei.
Chinese language media stories have proven inmates hunched over stitching machines in a garment workshop within the sprawling facility. Enterprise leaders and Chinese language Communist Social gathering dignitaries have praised the penitentiary for exemplifying President Xi Jinping’s views on the rule of legislation.
However the jail has an alarming secret, U.S. congressional investigators disclosed final 12 months. They revealed proof displaying that it’s a Chinese language authorities outpost within the trafficking pipeline that inundates the USA with fentanyl.
For at the least eight years, the jail owned a chemical firm known as Yafeng, the hub of a gaggle of Chinese language companies and web sites that offered fentanyl merchandise to People, in line with the U.S. congressional investigation, in addition to Chinese language authorities and company data obtained by ProPublica. The corporate’s English-language web sites openly supplied U.S. clients harmful medication which might be unlawful in each nations. Promising to smuggle illicit chemical substances previous U.S. and Mexican border defenses, Yafeng boasted to American shoppers that “100% of our shipments will clear customs.”
Though China tightly restricts the home manufacturing, sale and use of fentanyl merchandise, the nation has been the world’s main producer of fentanyl that enters the USA and stays the main producer of chemical precursors with which Mexican cartels make the drug. Overdoses on artificial opioid medication, most of them fentanyl associated, have killed over 450,000 People in the course of the previous decade — greater than the U.S. deaths within the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars mixed.
The involvement of a state-run jail is only one signal of the Chinese language authorities’s function in fomenting the U.S. fentanyl disaster, U.S. investigators say. Chinese language leaders have insistently denied such allegations. However U.S. nationwide safety officers stated the Yafeng case exhibits how China permits its chemical business to have interaction brazenly in gross sales to abroad clients whereas blocking on-line home entry and implementing stern legal guidelines towards drug dealing contained in the nation. Beijing additionally encourages the manufacture and export of fentanyl merchandise, together with medication outlawed in China, with beneficiant monetary incentives, in line with a bipartisan inquiry final 12 months by the Home Choose Committee on Strategic Competitors between the USA and the Chinese language Communist Social gathering.
“So the Chinese language authorities pays you to ship medication to America however executes you for promoting them in China,” Matt Cronin, a former federal prosecutor who led the Home inquiry, stated in an interview. “It’s unattainable that the Chinese language Communist Social gathering doesn’t know what’s happening and might’t do something about it.”
China’s antidrug cooperation has been persistently poor, U.S. officers stated. In 2019, Xi imposed controls that minimize the export of fentanyl, however Chinese language sellers shifted to delivery precursors to Mexico, the place the cartels expanded their manufacturing.
“We couldn’t get the Chinese language on the cellphone to speak about preventing baby pornography, not to mention fentanyl,’’ stated Jacob Braun, who served as a senior official on the Division of Homeland Safety in the course of the Biden administration. “There was zero cooperation.”
China additionally stays the bottom of world organized crime teams that launder billions for fentanyl traffickers within the U.S, Mexico and Canada. ProPublica has beforehand reported that this underground banking system relies on the Chinese language elite, who transfer fortunes overseas by buying drug money from Chinese language felony brokers for Mexican cartels. Chinese language banks and companies additionally assist conceal the origin of illicit proceeds. The regime in Beijing due to this fact has appreciable management over key nodes within the fentanyl chain: uncooked supplies, manufacturing, gross sales and cash laundering.
U.S. leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, have accused China of utilizing fentanyl to weaken the USA. Some veteran brokers agree.
Ray Donovan, who retired in 2023 because the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief of operations, stated he believes {that a} “deliberate technique” by the Chinese language state has brought on the trafficking onslaught “to develop in dimension and scope.”
“They’ve stated for years that they’re cracking down,” Donovan stated in an interview. “However we haven’t seen significant motion.”
Nonetheless, present and former U.S. officers instructed ProPublica that the nationwide safety group has not discovered conclusive proof of a deliberate, high-level marketing campaign towards People by the Chinese language authorities. That’s partly as a result of for years the U.S. handled fentanyl as a legislation enforcement matter quite than a nationwide safety menace, making it onerous to collect intelligence in regards to the extent and nature of the regime’s function.
“If this was Chinese language intelligence doing one thing, we have now a concentrate on that as counterintelligence,” stated Alan Kohler, who retired from the FBI in 2023 after serving as director of the counterintelligence division. “If it was drug cartels, we have now a felony concentrate on that. However this space of crime and state converging falls between the seams in and amongst companies.”
Nonetheless, the present and former officers stated rampant fentanyl trafficking couldn’t proceed with out at the least the passive complicity of the world’s strongest police state.
“I haven’t seen smoking-gun proof that it’s a coverage or technique of the federal government at a excessive stage,” Kohler stated. “You could possibly argue that their choice to not do something about it, even after the outcomes are clear, is tacit help.”
In a written assertion, the spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington described as “completely groundless” any allegation that the regime has fomented the disaster.
“The fentanyl situation is the U.S.’s personal drawback,” stated the spokesperson, Liu Pengyu. “China has given help to the U.S.’s response to the fentanyl situation within the spirit of humanity.” At the USA’ request, he stated, China in 2019 restricted “fentanyl-related substances as a category,” turning into the primary nation to take action, and has cooperated with the U.S. on counternarcotics.
“The outstanding progress is there for all to see.”
The Trump administration has made the combat towards fentanyl a precedence and in February imposed a 25% tariff on Chinese language imports to stress Beijing for outcomes. The method may put a dent within the drug commerce, but it surely’s too early to inform, officers stated.
“The Chinese language system responds to a damaging incentive,” stated former FBI agent Holden Triplett, who served as authorized attache in Beijing and director of counterintelligence on the Nationwide Safety Council. “China could also be keen to endure extra ache than we may give. However it’s our solely probability.”
To reply successfully, the U.S. wants a clearer image of the Chinese language fentanyl underworld, Triplett and others say. The actions of the Shijiazhuang jail are a compelling case examine, however not the one one.
To look at the function of the Chinese language state within the drug commerce, ProPublica interviewed greater than three dozen present and former nationwide safety officers for the U.S. and different international locations, a few of whom supplied unique inside accounts. The reporting additionally drew on final 12 months’s Home investigation, digging into vital findings which have obtained little public consideration, plus courtroom recordsdata, authorities paperwork, educational research, personal inquiries and public data within the U.S., China and Mexico.
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Collage by Mike McQuade for ProPublica. Supply photographs: Google Maps and screenshots from advertisements discovered by a U.S. congressional inquiry.
Jail Enterprise
In 2010, the Hebei Jail Administration Bureau mixed three detention amenities to create a high-security jail in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province. The area is a base of China’s chemical business, which is the most important on the earth. Additionally it is weakly regulated and freewheeling, in line with U.S. nationwide safety officers, personal research and different sources. A shifting array of firms peddle all the things from innocuous fertilizers to lethal opioids.
Liu Jianhua, a veteran Chinese language Communist Social gathering official with a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration from the College of Illinois Chicago, turned director of the jail in 2014. By then, fentanyl was slicing a swath throughout America. Overdose deaths soared as a result of ease with which U.S. customers and sellers may purchase fentanyl merchandise by mail from China.
China’s high-tech surveillance equipment aggressively polices the web actions of its residents. But gross sales of fentanyl to foreigners have thrived on in style, simply accessible web sites, stated Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI agent with years of China-related expertise who served as a prime U.S. counterintelligence official.
“You don’t should go on the darkish internet,” Montoya stated. “It’s out within the open.”
Yafeng Organic Expertise Co. Ltd., often known as Hebei Shijiazhuang Yafeng Chemical Plant, turned a typical participant on this frontier, the congressional inquiry discovered. (As a part of its reporting, ProPublica mapped hyperlinks between the jail, the corporate and the U.S. drug market with the assistance of two entities specializing in China open-source analysis: Sayari, an organization that gives threat administration and supply-chain evaluation and that supported the Home inquiry, and C4ADS, a nonprofit that investigates illicit world networks.)
Yafeng’s web sites and Chinese language company data describe the agency as a chemical producer. It has ties by different web sites, cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses to at the least 9 firms that marketed illicit medication, inflicting investigators to conclude that Yafeng was a community hub, in line with the report and interviews. It’s widespread for interconnected Chinese language fentanyl producers and brokers to obscure particulars about their enterprises and alter names and platforms to elude detection, U.S. officers stated.
In some methods, Yafeng offered itself to international patrons as a decent firm. The English-language web sites featured peppy phrases like “group spirit” and “selling the well-being of group.” The China-based gross sales representatives gave themselves Western names: Diana, Monica, Jessica. A map of markets confirmed delivery routes from China to the USA, Mexico, Canada and different international locations.
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U.S. authorities
But the gross sales pitches left little doubt that the agency knew its actions had been unlawful. Yafeng web sites utilized acquainted phrases assuring U.S. and Mexican drug customers and traffickers of the corporate’s talent at smuggling unlawful narcotics abroad, in line with the Home report and U.S. investigators. The corporate touted its use of “hidden meals luggage,” a technique wherein medication are hid in shipments labeled as meals merchandise. Advertisements promised “robust security supply to Mexico, USA” with “packaging made to measure” to “assure” that illicit chemical substances would elude border inspections, paperwork present.
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U.S. authorities
Chinese language traffickers typically focus on lawbreaking in such brazen phrases with international clients, seemingly unconcerned about China’s omnipresent surveillance system, courtroom recordsdata and interviews present. One other agency, Hubei Amarvel Biotech, explicitly defined to U.S. and Mexican shoppers on-line — full with pictures — its strategies for “100% stealth delivery” of medication disguised as nuts, pet food and motor oil, courtroom paperwork say. After undercover DEA brokers lured two Amarvel executives to Fiji and arrested them, a New York jury convicted them in February on costs of importation of fentanyl precursors and cash laundering. (One defendant, Yiyi Chen, has filed a movement requesting an acquittal or retrial.)
On the time of the arrests, the Chinese language authorities issued an announcement condemning the U.S. prosecution as “a typical instance of arbitrary detention and unilateral sanctions.”
Equally, Yafeng web sites displayed pictures of narcotics in plastic baggies to hawk an extended checklist of chemical substances, together with fentanyl precursors and U-47700, a strong fentanyl analogue outlawed in each the U.S. and China that has no medical use, the Home report says.
One sufferer of U-47700 was Garrett Holman of Lynchburg, Virginia. Holman had fallen in with youths who found how straightforward it was to purchase artificial medication on-line. In late 2016, Holman overdosed on U-47700, road identify “pinky,” that arrived by mail from southern China. His father, Don, carried out CPR earlier than paramedics rushed Holman to the hospital. Though he survived, one other overdose killed him simply days earlier than his twenty first birthday in February 2017.
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U.S. authorities
“My son’s opioid publicity was lower than two months,” Don Holman instructed a listening to of the Home Overseas Affairs Committee the following 12 months. “At 20 years outdated, I don’t imagine my son deserved to die for his preliminary dangerous selections.”
The daddy handed over proof, together with the envelope wherein the medication arrived, to federal brokers, who traced about 20 shipments again to the identical sender in China, he stated in an interview. Don Holman blames the fentanyl disaster on the American urge for food for opioids in addition to the Chinese language authorities. He has spent eight years telling anybody he can, from drug czars to fellow dad and mom, in regards to the expertise that shattered his household.
“I’ve needed to hit dad and mom proper between the eyes, like: ‘Hey, your baby shouldn’t be going to be right here when you don’t do one thing,” he stated. “That you must get up.’”
No hyperlink to Yafeng surfaced in that case. The agency’s gross sales of U-47700 and different illicit medication occurred throughout a interval when its sole proprietor and controlling shareholder was the Shijiazhuang jail, in line with the Home inquiry, Sayari and C4ADS.
One in all Yafeng’s road addresses was that of the jail, ProPublica decided by satellite tv for pc pictures and public data. One other Yafeng tackle subsequent door additionally homes the workplaces of a clothes agency owned by the provincial jail administration. A 3rd Yafeng tackle a couple of blocks away is a former municipal police station, data and pictures present.
The director of the jail, Liu Jianhua, left his put up after turning into the goal of a corruption inquiry in 2021, in line with Chinese language media stories. It’s unknown how that investigation was resolved or if his fall had something to do with the drug exercise. Liu couldn’t be reached for remark. The jail administration didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Yafeng stopped doing enterprise underneath that identify sooner or later between 2018 and 2022, data present. But the Yafeng group continued to operate by at the least one in all its affiliated web sites, protonitazene.com, the congressional report stated. As of final 12 months, the positioning was nonetheless promoting “sizzling sale to Mexico” of medication together with nitazenes, that are 25 occasions extra highly effective than fentanyl.
Authorities Incentives
Yafeng shouldn’t be the one firm with connections to the Chinese language state and fentanyl.
Gaosheng Biotechnology in Shanghai is “wholly state-owned,” congressional investigators discovered. The corporate offered fentanyl precursors and different narcotics — some unlawful in China — on 98 web sites to U.S., Mexican and European clients, the report says. Senior provincial improvement officers visited Gaosheng and praised its advantages for the regional economic system. Gaosheng didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The Chinese language authorities owned a stake in Zhejiang Netsun, a personal agency that had a Chinese language Communist Social gathering member serving on its board of administrators as a deputy basic supervisor, the congressional report says. Netsun carried out over 400 gross sales of unlawful narcotics, the report says, and served as a billing or technical contact for over 100 related firms — together with Yafeng. Netsun didn’t reply to requests for remark.
And the Shanghai authorities gave financial awards and export credit to Shanghai Ruizheng Chemical Expertise Co., a “infamous vendor of fentanyl merchandise, which it advertises extensively and brazenly on Chinese language web sites like Alibaba,” the report says. Chinese language officers invited firm reps to roundtable discussions about expertise and enterprise. Shanghai Ruizheng didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Chinese language authorities officers who work together with the trafficking underworld are sometimes distinguished in provincial governments, the place corruption is widespread, stated a former senior DEA official, Donald Im, who led investigations centered on China. Not solely can they earn cash by kickbacks or investments, however they profit politically, rising within the Communist Social gathering hierarchy if their native chemical industries prosper.
“Key authorities officers know in regards to the fentanyl commerce and so they let it occur,” Im stated.
China’s central authorities additionally performs a significant function by offering systemic monetary incentives that gasoline fentanyl trafficking to the Americas, U.S. officers say. The Home inquiry found a nationwide Worth-Added Tax rebate program that has spurred exports of at the least 17 unlawful narcotics with no legit objective. They embody a fentanyl product that’s “as much as 6,000 occasions stronger than morphine,” the Home report says.
This state subsidy program has pumped billions of {dollars} into the export of fentanyl merchandise, together with ones outlawed in China, in line with the report and U.S. officers. The tax rebate is 13%, the very best obtainable charge. To qualify, firms should doc the names and portions of chemical substances and different particulars of transactions, the report says.
The existence of this paper path refutes a frequent declare by Chinese language leaders: that weak regulation of the chemical sector makes it unattainable to establish and punish suspects.
Chinese language officers didn’t reply to particular questions in regards to the authorities monetary incentives or the state-connected firms concerned in drug trafficking. However the embassy spokesperson stated China has focused on-line sellers with a “nationwide web cleanup marketing campaign.”
Throughout that crackdown, Liu Pengyu stated, Chinese language authorities have cleaned “14 on-line platforms, canceled over 330 firm accounts, shut down over 1,000 on-line retailers, eliminated over 152,000 on-line ads, and closed 10 botnet web sites.” He stated Chinese language legislation enforcement has decided that many unlawful advertisements seem on international on-line platforms.
Wall of Resistance
In Could 2018, Cronin — then a federal prosecutor based mostly in Cleveland — went to Beijing in pursuit of one of many greatest targets within the grim historical past of the fentanyl disaster: the Zheng drug trafficking group, a world empire accused of trafficking in 37 U.S. states.
Cronin and his group of brokers hoped to steer Chinese language authorities to prosecute Guanghua and Fujing Zheng, a father and son who had been the highest suspects. They ran right into a wall of resistance.
In an interview, Cronin recalled strolling right into a cavernous room in China’s Ministry of Public Safety the place a row of senior officers and uniformed police waited at an extended desk. A curtain-sized Chinese language flag lined a wall.
Cronin took a breath, opened a stack of binders he had lugged from Cleveland and offered his case. The prosecutor laid out proof connecting the Zhengs, who had been chemical firm executives based mostly in Shanghai, to 2 overdoses in Ohio. The U.S. distribution hub was a warehouse close to Boston run by a Chinese language chemist, Bin Wang. Later, Wang stated he concurrently labored for the Chinese language authorities “monitoring chemical substances produced in China” and traveled residence month-to-month from Boston “to seek the advice of with Chinese language officers,” a memo by his lawyer stated.
The response of the Chinese language counterdrug chiefs was a brush-off, Cronin recalled within the interview. Basically, he stated, they instructed him: “You might be proper that the Zhengs are exporting these medication which might be killing People. However sadly, technically what they’re doing shouldn’t be a violation of Chinese language legislation.”
Cronin pulled out one other binder. He went over proof and an professional evaluation displaying that the Zhengs had dedicated Chinese language felonies, together with cash laundering, manufacturing of counterfeit medication and mislabeling of packages.
Tensions rose when the Chinese language officers responded that, sadly, the police unit that dealt with such offenses was not obtainable; they rebuffed Cronin’s provide to delay his return flight as a way to meet with that unit, he stated.
After the U.S. Justice Division charged the Zhengs that August with a drug trafficking conspiracy leading to loss of life, a Chinese language newspaper reported {that a} Chinese language senior counterdrug official criticized the case. The U.S. “failed to offer China any proof to show Zheng violated Chinese language legislation,” the official stated.
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Courtesy of James Rauh
Later, the U.S. Treasury Division sanctioned the Zhengs and designated the son as a drug kingpin. U.S. investigators instructed ProPublica they concluded that the Zhengs operated with the blessing of the Chinese language authorities, citing the defendants’ sheer quantity of enterprise, high-profile on-line exercise and open communications on WeChat, the Chinese language messaging platform that authorities closely monitor.
Ohio courts granted tens of millions of {dollars} in civil damages to the household of Thomas Rauh, a 37-year-old who died of an overdose in Akron in 2015. The household by no means obtained any cash, nonetheless.
Rauh’s father, James, who traveled and did enterprise in China in his youth, has turn out to be an antidrug activist. He stated the U.S. authorities should do extra to crack down on China’s function and counter public stigma that also blames addicts.
“I don’t suppose the U.S. authorities desires to take the duty for confronting this,” he stated.
A decade of frustration has compelled James Rauh to name for a drastic answer. He desires the U.S. to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction in response to what he sees as an intentional Chinese language marketing campaign.
“It’s uneven warfare,” he stated.
The Zhengs stay free in China and have by no means responded to the allegations in courtroom. Throughout a short encounter with a “60 Minutes” journalist in Shanghai in 2019, Guanghua Zheng denied he was nonetheless promoting fentanyl in the USA and stated the Chinese language authorities “has nothing to do with it.” Wang pleaded responsible and served jail time.
The Zheng case is typical, stated Im, the previous senior DEA official. 1000’s of DEA leads relayed to Chinese language counterparts over time have been “met with silence,” he stated. In different instances, Chinese language officers have requested for extra particulars in regards to the targets of U.S. investigations — after which warned suspects linked to the Communist Social gathering, Im stated.
Most U.S. nationwide safety officers interviewed for this story described related experiences, citing a couple of exceptions, corresponding to a joint U.S.-Chinese language operation in Hebei province in 2019.
A former DEA agent, William Kinghorn, recalled the dispiriting aftermath of an investigation he oversaw centered on Chuen Fats Yip, whose companies allegedly distributed greater than $280 million price of medication. Yip has denied wrongdoing and denounced U.S. felony costs and sanctions. He’s on the DEA’s 10 most wished fugitives checklist and stays free in China, U.S. officers stated.
“We obtained info that the Chinese language authorities did ban or shut down the businesses” the DEA focused within the case, Kinghorn stated in an interview. “We discovered that afterward these similar folks [linked to Yip] had been now proudly owning or managing related firms. Regardless that they’d been banned, they mainly simply modified the identify of the corporate.”
A way of impunity persists within the chemical business, in line with a 2023 inquiry by Elliptic, a U.Ok. analytics agency. It reported that most of the 90 Chinese language firms contacted by its undercover researchers had been “keen to produce fentanyl itself, regardless of this being banned in China since 2019.”
The ultimate 12 months of the Biden administration introduced indicators of modest progress in China, together with new rules, shutdowns of companies, and arrests of a suspected cash launderer and 4 senior chemical firm workers charged by U.S. prosecutors.
Citing these instances from 2024, spokesperson Liu Pengyu stated China has “collaborated intently” with the U.S., including, “A number of main instances are making nice progress.”
In the meantime, U.S. overdose deaths fell by 33% in contrast with the earlier 12 months, in line with the annual menace evaluation by the U.S. intelligence group launched March 25. The drop could also be tied to the elevated availability of naloxone, a drug for treating overdoses, the report stated.
The menace evaluation report warned that “China seemingly will battle to sufficiently constrain” firms and felony teams concerned within the U.S. fentanyl commerce, “absent higher legislation enforcement actions.”
Cronin, the previous federal prosecutor, went on to turn out to be chief investigative counsel for the Home Choose Committee. He led final 12 months’s inquiry into China’s function within the fentanyl disaster. The committee’s evaluation of seven Chinese language firm web sites discovered over 31,000 situations of companies providing unlawful chemical substances throughout a interval of about three months in early 2024.
Undercover communications with the companies “revealed an eagerness to have interaction in clearly illicit drug gross sales,” the report says, “with no concern of reprisal.”
Kirsten Berg contributed analysis.
