China boosts cooperation in fentanyl probes following FBI Director Kash Patel’s visit

New indictments this week in a sweeping probe into the alleged sale and distribution of fentanyl precursor chemicals by Chinese companies and their American collaborators shows that federal investigators may have finally broken the logjam in cooperation with Chinese authorities. 

FBI Director Kash Patel publicly thanked China’s Ministry of Public Security–the country’s domestic law enforcement agency–for its “unprecedented cooperation” in the investigation and for tightening controls over the precursor chemicals after an agreement between the U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last October. 

China has cooperated before with the U.S. on cracking down on the precursors used to manufacture deadly fentanyl, but often limited its help to administrative actions or token assistance. 

For example, the Chinese government promised on two prior occasions to crack down on fentanyl precursor chemicals, only to allegedly subsidize their manufacture and route trade instead through Mexican cartels, Just the News previously reported. 

When FBI Director Kash Patel quietly traveled to China in the wake of the Trump-Xi meeting, he aimed to hammer out the details of the leaders’ agreement with his Chinese counterparts. The Chinese leader had made renewed promises to crackdown on the chemical trade in exchange for tariff relief.  

Two prior U.S. administrations, including the first Trump administration, agreed to similar deals with Beijing, only to find that little actually changed. 

But, this time, China has shown remarkable openness by receiving the FBI director personally in Beijing, the first time in over a decade, Patel said. 

"This was a historic trip for the FBI and America’s national security – the first time in a decade that an FBI Director has been to China and received an audience with his counterpart to discuss the fentanyl crisis," Patel told Fox News Digital at the time of his trip. 

Operation "Box Cutter"  

The recent indictments handed down by a federal grand jury in Dayton, Ohio, charged six Chinese nationals and two Chinese pharmaceutical companies in “narcotics and money laundering conspiracies” tied to the buying and selling of chemical agents used to “​​manufacture and cut fentanyl,” the Justice Department said. 

As the prosecutors explained, drug traffickers use some substances known as “cut” to increase the volume of doses of fentanyl available for sale. One common chemical used is medetomidine, a powerful animal tranquilizer. 

The two indicted Chinese companies, Shandong Believe Chemical Company Pte Ltd. and Shandong Ranhang Biotechnology Co. Ltd., used defendants Hanson Zhao, Gao Yanpeng, Xia Yi, Zhang Jian, Wang Zhoalan and Zhang Chunhai “to solicit, negotiate, and secure payments for illegal cutting agents from U.S. customers.” 

Three of the defendants were also charged with attempting to provide material support for a foreign terrorist organization by selling precursor chemicals and medetomidine to a person who claimed to be a member of the Mexican cartel ​​Cártel del Golfo. 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, China’s Ministry of Public Security assisted the FBI with “critical intelligence” about Shandong Believe Chemical Company and its “criminal network,” leading to the indictment targeting the company. 

Patel: “These indictments are historic" 

These indictments follow earlier prosecutions tied to the operation, code named Box Cutter. A previous round of indictments in September charged three U.S. citizens, 22 Chinese nationals, and four additional Chinese pharmaceutical companies. One of the defendants, Eric Michael Payne of Tipp City, Ohio, was alleged to be the “main supplier” of fentanyl cutting agents to traffickers operating across Southern Ohio. 

Patel celebrated the new indictments this week, specifically linking the progress of the investigation to his under-the-radar trip to China and the close collaboration of federal law enforcement with their Chinese counterparts.

“These indictments are historic,” Patel said in a statement posted to X. “The multi-agency investigation involved unprecedented cooperation with China’s MPS - and followed the FBI’s historic visit to China in November, successfully working with MPS to tighten controls over the precursor chemicals key to fueling fentanyl trafficking.” 

Shortly after taking office last year, President Trump imposed several tariffs on China for its failure to combat fentanyl precursor chemicals, targeting steel, automobiles, and other goods that once reached over 100%. China retaliated by raising its own tariffs on U.S. goods. 

After multiple rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs and other trade barriers, Trump and Xi agreed to a trade truce after negotiations on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in South Korea.

In addition to a renewed crackdown on fentanyl precursors, China vowed to resume purchases of American soybeans and delay onerous restrictions on exports of vital rare earth metals for at least one year. In return, the Trump administration promised to drastically reduce the significant tariffs it had imposed against China since Trump took office. 

Skepticism remains

At the time, experts told Just the News that it would be important for the United States to demand results, not just words, from the Chinese on fentanyl, given the country’s poor track record on enforcement. 

“[We’re] going to have to see some results here,” Victoria Coates, former Deputy National Security Advisor during Trump’s first term and a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, told Just the News after the summit. “Chairman Xi will smile for the cameras, he'll say nice things, and then go back and do exactly what he was doing before.” 

Once before, in 2019, China agreed to add all fentanyl related substances to its controlled substances schedule, making their export tightly regulated. Prior to this agreement, China was “the primary source of U.S.-bound illicit fentanyl, fentanyl-related substances, and production equipment,” according to the Congressional Research Service. 

Though the agreement saw direct shipments of fentanyl and related products from China approach zero, Mexican criminal organizations quickly replaced the direct pipeline to the United States. Those criminal organizations reported imported fentanyl precursors directly from China for manufacturing drugs for export to the United States. Additionally, the Treasury Department assessed that those organizations increasingly cooperated with Chinese money laundering operations in this drug trade. 

China was criticized for poor enforcement, especially as tensions between China and the United States reached new heights towards the end of the first Trump administration. 

During this period, the Chinese government tacitly permitted Chinese money laundering organizations to assist Mexican drug cartels to launder the dollars obtained in the U.S. as part of the fentanyl trafficking process.

The problem remained unsolved. In November 2023, President Joe Biden attempted to negotiate greater Chinese enforcement action against the illicit fentanyl trade, but the plan failed to address the Mexican cartel middlemen, Just the News previously reported. Less than a year later, a House committee concluded that China was still subsidizing the production of fentanyl precursor chemicals, raising significant questions about China’s compliance with the agreement.