Reverse Opium War Update: Beijing Blinks
After a six-part series on the CCP's Reverse Opium War in North America, we just received some welcome news out of China.
June 2025 brought a startling and long-overdue development: the Chinese Communist Party publicly signaled its willingness to work with the United States on fentanyl and narcotics control, marking the first significant policy shift since the U.S. overdose crisis exploded into national view.
On June 19, China’s State Councilor and Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong, met with U.S. Ambassador David Perdue in Beijing and committed to cooperation on anti-drug enforcement and related law enforcement matters. This comes after years of stonewalling from Beijing, which previously insisted that the fentanyl crisis was solely an American issue.
According to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency, the two sides pledged to implement the “important consensus” reached between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping, under the principles of “mutual respect” and “win-win cooperation.” But let us be clear - Xi took no demonstrable action after this supposed consensus. What North Americans are demanding is not another round of diplomatic language, but a full reversal of the covert chemical and financial assault on our societies. The fact that Xinhua commented the way they did strongly suggests that Beijing is still attempting to divide Western societies and manipulate elite opinion under the guise of diplomacy. We reject this deception outright and call on China to use straight talk and practice real accountability.
A First Crack in the Reverse Opium War Wall
As outlined in WideFountain’s Reverse Opium War series, this crisis was not a chance externality of globalization. Our research, in collaboration with Canadian partner institute The Bureau, has identified a coordinated effort within China, spanning organized crime syndicates, United Front operatives, and embedded CCP officials, that have used narcotics, precursor chemicals, and underground financial networks as weapons of asymmetric warfare against the West.
This is not a broken system. It is, rather, a malign system that has operated with tactical coherence and state tolerance, if not direction. From Macau to Vancouver to the Mexican border, Chinese networks, shielded by Beijing’s denials, have played an indispensable role in flooding Western cities with lethal narcotics. The cost: more than 70,000 American lives every year, with similar impacts in Canada.
What Comes Next: Leverage, Credit, and Clarity
WideFountain affirms the following policy outlook:
China’s recent shift is not goodwill — it is strategy. The CCP is fully capable of reining in the key actors behind the Reverse Opium War, should it decide to do so. It is now time to insist they do just that.
The Trump Administration deserves clear credit. For years, the CCP denied all responsibility and refused to engage. It was only after the Trump Administration imposed tariffs and treated fentanyl as a geopolitical attack that Beijing began to shift. Whether China’s pivot is genuine or tactical, it was Trump’s pressure that brought them to the table. But let’s be honest: removing the CCP’s hand is only half the battle. The cartels remain entrenched in the physical distribution network. If Chinese precursors disappear, substitutes can and will be inserted. The U.S. must pursue both fronts aggressively.
3. Canada must wake up—and be brought in. The CCP deliberately targeted Vancouver as a soft entry point to stage its attack on North America. To do so, it devised a covert strategy to overwhelm local institutions and capture key elites within the Canadian government. That strategy worked — but it must end now. The United States should bring Canada into the fold and insist that officials at all levels — federal, provincial, and municipal — adopt a new, clear-eyed approach to the China threat. If Canadian leaders are still unclear about what has unfolded in British Columbia since the 1990s, they can hire investigative journalist Sam Cooper, who has done more than any official to expose the machinery behind this criminal onslaught. Canada must wake up and smell the coffee —before the damage becomes irreversible. The CCP has revealed that it can act. North Americans must now ensure that it does. The West must move beyond statements, and demand results - dismantling the Reverse Opium War at its source and refusing any diplomatic theater that obscures the truth. Meanwhile, once Canada is ready to climb onboard, the U.S. should insist they are present in negotiations with China, after all, the U.S. was the real target and Canada suffered huge damage for being our northernly neighbor.
Now is the time to force the recall of the CCP’s malign actors —before more lives are lost. There are other important considerations and, I believe, movement from the West that can help stop the Reverse Opium War in its tracks. I will get to that in my next article.
Notes:
Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore: https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20250620-6903140
Chinascope, Washington, DC: https://chinascope.org/archives/38023
Johnnie To’s Election 1 and Election 2 documented how Beijing used MSS to seize control of triad and secret societies in HK. Prior to the handover, most of these triad CEO were democratically elected. Ironically, the script writer of both films is the brother of commander in HK police force 2019 721 incident. During the 2019 721 Yuen Long attack, the commander openly shook hands with triad attackers, it was shown on Youtube via NowTV, but now the video recordings are deleted, probably at the request of HK police or HK government.