On May 5, 2026, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng gave an exclusive interview to Senior Foreign Policy Writer Tom O’Connor from Newsweek on U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to China and China-U.S. relations.

Tom O’Connor asked: How does China view the US designation of fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” and accusations toward China regarding the flow of fentanyl precursors?

Ambassador Xie said that illegal drugs are a common enemy of humanity. As the biggest victim of opium in history, the Chinese people feel for the American public suffering from fentanyl abuse. To tackle the drug problem, it is important to reduce both the demand and the supply, and enhance domestic governance while conducting international cooperation, so as to address both the symptoms and the root causes.

Ambassador Xie pointed out that the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. was not created by China. But out of the humanitarian spirit and for the sake of China-U.S. friendship, we have been doing our utmost to provide assistance with the greatest goodwill. At the request of the U.S. side, China scheduled fentanyl-related substances as a whole class as early as in 2019, the first country to do so in the world. After the San Francisco summit between the two heads of state in 2023, our two countries launched a Counternarcotics Working Group, and carried out cooperation in areas including substance scheduling, joint handling of cases, technological exchanges, multilateral cooperation, and removal of online ads. Since the Busan summit in 2025, China has been faithfully implementing the common understandings reached by both sides, including tightening export controls on 13 fentanyl precursor chemicals to North America, issuing a circular warning businesses and individuals to prevent legal chemicals and equipment from being diverted to illicit drug production, and launching a nationwide campaign to crack down on chemical trafficking. We also conducted joint investigations with the U.S. side into major cases involving drug-related money laundering and drug smuggling. The cooperation between the two sides has achieved notable progress.

Ambassador Xie noted that the current U.S. administration has strengthened legislation, law enforcement and regulatory control to combat fentanyl. The number of fentanyl-involved deaths in the U.S. has fallen by 37.5%. China also made important and positive contributions to this. Articles in the Science journal and the Foreign Affairs magazine this year pointed out that China’s efforts to tighten control over fentanyl precursors have been an important factor contributing to the significant decline in drug overdose deaths in the U.S. We hope the U.S. side will appreciate and cherish China’s goodwill, view our cooperation outcomes in a just manner, stop shifting the blame for the fentanyl issue, avoid imposing alternative tariffs as substitutes for fentanyl-related tariffs, remove China from the list of so-called “major drug source countries” as soon as possible, and advance bilateral cooperation in counternarcotics and other law enforcement areas based on mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit.