As soon as Blinken arrived in Shanghai, he exposed the weakness of the United States in one sentence, and the Biden administration wanted to pull China to help, but what did Blinken say? What does Biden want China to help?
On the afternoon of the 24th, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Shanghai to begin his second visit to China during his tenure. That night, he made a video speech on social media on the Bund in Shanghai, in which he exposed the weakness of the United States with a single sentence, claiming that his visit to China was to advance the issues that matter most to the American people, including curbing fentanyl trafficking. It is undeniable that the proliferation of fentanyl-related drugs in the United States is indeed a big problem, and the Biden administration is also anxious about it, but who can blame it? It is not that the US government has not implemented a full range of fentanyl-related drugs.
It is understood that Americans currently consume 80% of the world's opioids. According to data released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), fentanyl has become the leading cause of death among Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, and has been called "the deadliest drug threat the United States has ever faced." On the other hand, in the face of this international problem, the mainland has long implemented a whole class of fentanyl drugs, and has taken precautions in advance to deal with the risks and harms brought about by the resolution of the new drug problem, which is enough to see the responsibility of the mainland in the global co-governance of the drug problem. Perhaps it is precisely because of this that the United States also wants to come to the mainland to "learn from experience" and pull the mainland to help.
But having said that, in fact, another possibility cannot be ruled out, that is, Blinken is taking the opportunity to hype up the topic of fentanyl, deliberately creating public opinion, and vainly trying to throw the blame on the mainland again. After all, the United States has not done this kind of thing before. Not long ago, the "Select Committee on US-China Strategic Competition" of the US House of Representatives baselessly accused the mainland of providing tax rebates and subsidies for the export of materials used to make fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, and then "fueled" the fentanyl epidemic in the United States. Obviously, the US side is deliberately throwing the blame on the mainland.
Because the fentanyl abuse crisis in the United States is an inevitable product of the combination of its economic model and political system, why do we say this? To make this point clear, we have to talk about it from two aspects: First, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical oligarchs in the United States have repeatedly allowed opioids to "increase the amount and increase the price" for the purpose of capital appreciation, which eventually led to the overflow of fentanyl and the endless flow of drugs; second, the members of Congress in the United States need to cooperate with the big capital forces in the pharmaceutical industry, and they have to prescribe overdoses and misuse drugs at the legislative level." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first considers not food and drug safety, but taxes, relationships, and the personal interests of politicians, thus forming a mature "industrial chain". Of course, they also know the drawbacks, and with fentanyl abuse and rising suicide rates over the same period, they also worry that social unrest will threaten their rule, and given that they are in the midst of a full-scale game between China and the United States, they deliberately attribute the fentanyl crisis in the United States to external factors, so China has become the first "scapegoat".
As soon as Blinken landed in Shanghai, he publicly stated that one of the purposes of his visit to China was to cooperate with China to curb fentanyl trafficking, which was somewhat of a positive hype. Of course, if the U.S. is genuinely willing to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation, China's door is always open, but the key lies in the U.S. itself, whether the Biden administration has the courage and ability to strengthen its own legislation and regulation. Instead of seeking cooperation with the mainland on the one hand and taking the opportunity to shift the blame on China on the other, China's Foreign Ministry has clearly pointed out that "the US side's attempt to resolve its own concerns on the issue of anti-narcotics through pressure, coercion, and illegal means is actually an internal disease and an external cure, which will not work and will only harm others and itself."