Chinese and American officials held the first meeting of a working group that aims to curb the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl to the U.S. and the chemicals used to make them.
“We reached common understanding,” China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong said Tuesday, describing the talks in Beijing as “professional” and “pragmatic.”
“Our two sides agreed to follow the principles of mutual respect, managing differences, and mutually beneficial cooperation as we work to carry on cooperation on counternarcotics,” Wang said.
The U.S. side emphasized the need for progress. “President Biden sent such a significant delegation to underscore the importance of this issue to the American people,” Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Jen Daskal said at the meeting.
The talks underscore how ties between China and the U.S. have stabilized since Biden and Xi met in California in November. The working group was one of the main outcomes of that sitdown, and it was quickly followed by the U.S. lifting sanctions on a Chinese government forensics laboratory in return for Beijing’s promise to clamp down on the fentanyl trade.
The U.S. has seen evidence of China taking steps to pursue companies that make precursor chemicals for fentanyl and disrupting illicit financial transactions related to them, senior administration officials have said.
China cut off counternarcotics cooperation with the U.S. following the 2022 visit of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.