cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/57074790

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The global fentanyl trade starts in China … The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] eavily subsidizes the global fentanyl precursor market through undisclosed tax rebates, and has given monetary grants to companies openly trafficking fentanyl online, in some of which the state holds an ownership stake. Additionally, precursor chemicals remain available for open sale on Chinese online marketplaces, despite the state having the internet surveillance capacity to notice and crack down.

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Those precursor chemicals are then intentionally routed into Canada to exploit weak jurisdiction. A recent Frontier Centre for Public Policy report notes that Vancouver and Prince Rupert have become prime drug trafficking targets especially from China precisely because traffickers can count on a low chance of getting caught. Audit data cited in a Metro Vancouver policing review report shows that fewer than two per cent of shipping containers entering the city’s ports are scanned with X-ray or gamma imaging, and fewer than one per cent are physically opened and searched.

Once the precursors enter Canadian borders, they wind up in fentanyl labs, such as those uncovered in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto, where they are used to manufacture finished fentanyl product at massive scales. In 2024, the RCMP uncovered the largest known illegal drug lab in Canada which contained enough synthetic drugs to deliver more than 95 million potentially lethal doses to Canadians.

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The evidence is clear. China is very likely behind the drug crisis killing thousands of Canadians and poisoning our allies. The question worth asking is not whether Beijing’s fingerprints are on the trade, but what its intentions are in pursuing a narcotic hybrid warfare campaign against Canada.

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There are three likely objectives.

• The first is a shaping operation: an action taken before or during a larger confrontation to weaken an opponent’s capacity to respond once that confrontation arrives. For example, the 2022 Russian Viasat cyberattack, which blinded Ukrainian military communications hours before Russian troops crossed the border. The Canadian drug crisis has degraded our population’s health, workforce, and pulled billions of federal dollars in mitigatory efforts; these effects will permanently weaken Canada for decades to come. China’s role in flooding precursors into Canada gives Beijing an overwhelming advantage in any potential future confrontation …

• The second is an economic advantage. Beijing’s export tax rebates alone can generate millions of dollars in revenue from just a single precursor company. This figure, multiplied across thousands of precursor firms, proves China makes huge profits at the expense of Canadians. Much of this money is either reinvested back into drug production, laundered through casinos and real estate, or potentially used to fuel further hybrid warfare campaigns and illicit activities within Canada.

• The third objective is political. A manufactured drug crisis creates a damaged population that has less capacity to organize, less trust in its own institutions, and less appetite for electoral focus on foreign policy. Additionally, it gives Beijing additional fuel to manufacture support towards political candidates and influence Canada’s relations with the world. Most evidently, cross-border fentanyl trafficking was directly cited by Congress and US President Donald Trump as a major reason for the imposition of significant tariffs on Canadian exports. Destabilizing Canada’s relationship with our biggest ally pressures Ottawa to increasingly turn to China for trade, directly playing into their hands.

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Unrestricted Warfare, an influential 1999 book on Chinese military strategy by PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, explicitly lists drug warfare among the tools available to a CCP seeking to weaken a stronger rival without ever risking direct confrontation. As part of the broader theoretical framework for asymmetric warfare against Western states, the authors note that China should engage in “drug warfare that causes disasters in other countries and make huge profits”; exactly what Beijing is doing in Canada.

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Despite this glaring evidence, Canada has been slow to react; in fact, Ottawa confusingly has spent the past year deepening ties with China, a state with documented willingness to retaliate against governments that attempt to investigate its crimes.

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Policymakers and government officials in Ottawa should take this into account when considering future engagements with Beijing, prioritize investigations into Chinese drug precursor trafficking, and treat China’s support for the fentanyl crisis as a serious act of warfare.

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