Authored by Terri Wu & Olivia Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Tensions have been simmering between the United States and communist China as the two countries escalate tariffs on each other’s imports. Meanwhile, Beijing’s rhetoric has become increasingly confrontational.

In early March, the Chinese Embassy in Washington shared a social media post from its Foreign Ministry, repeating its message: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

President Donald Trump has warned that, while the United States does not seek war with China, it is “very well-equipped to handle it.”

Trump has imposed an additional 20 percent tariff on all goods made in China, citing a national emergency on the continued trafficking of fentanyl—a deadly opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine—into the United States.

To this day, China remains the primary source of fentanyl precursors, which are shipped to Mexico, where they’re manufactured into the illicit drug. It is then smuggled into the United States mainly via the southern border.

In response to Trump’s added tariff, Beijing imposed an additional 15 percent tariff on U.S. coal and natural gas and an extra 10 percent on agricultural equipment and pickup trucks.

The communist regime has also called the fentanyl epidemic the United States’ “own problem“ and has cast the U.S. tariffs as ”blackmail.”

Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at Peking University in China who now lives in Australia, said the American opioid epidemic is far from the self-inflicted wound the CCP has suggested it is.

The Chinese regime has played a significant role in America’s fentanyl crisis, and blaming the United States for it has long been Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s strategy, Yuan told NTD, Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, in a recent episode of the Chinese-language program “Pinnacle View.”

Yuan, who has insider access to senior CCP leaders, said Xi has consistently given internal directives during both Trump’s first and second terms that Beijing must maintain the narrative that the drug crises in both Europe and the United States are not linked to China.

Yuan said the regime has also been directed by Xi to assert that China makes the chemical precursors legally, and that if they are converted into deadly drugs and smuggled into the United States or Europe, it is not China’s responsibility.

The China expert further stated that fentanyl is at the core of Xi’s bid to “take revenge” on the West. He said Xi blames the West for subjecting China to a century of humiliation as a result of the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century. During that time, China had to sign a series of unequal treaties that ceded Chinese territory and opened Chinese ports to foreign control.

“It is precisely due to Xi’s directives that we are now seeing a dramatic increase in both the production of fentanyl precursors in China and the export of these chemicals, fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States,” Yuan said.

Fentanyl overdose deaths have become a national crisis, taking more than 200 American lives per day, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2023 alone, about 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdose, a staggering 23-fold increase from 10 years ago.

Today, accidental drug overdoses are the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. On a more positive note, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths decreased by more than 20 percent in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fentanyl crisis has become a key concern among American voters and has become one of the driving forces behind the dynamics of U.S.–China relations, said China expert Alexander Liao.

He said relations between Beijing and Washington have fundamentally changed. During the Biden administration, the two countries went through a diplomatic “ice age,” when senior-level official communication froze for approximately 10 months in 2022 and 2023. However, Liao believes the confrontation has now escalated to a new level.

“Whether it’s trade or other aspects, the United States and China have basically turned against each other,” Liao told The Epoch Times.

“Little noise but fierce action” is how he categorizes the current state between Beijing and Washington, in contrast to the “big arguments and little action” going on between the United States and Europe.

“The politics play differently between enemies and friends,” he said.

Over the past decade, China saw significant economic growth. Its nominal GDP is now over three-quarters of that of the United States, according to data from the World Bank. When measured by purchasing power, China’s economy surpassed that of the United States in 2016.

Xi rose in the CCP ranks a few years before that and in 2013 took over its leadership.

According to Yuan, Xi’s communist nature drove him to immediately cash in on China’s economic strength to establish a foreign policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at expanding communist totalitarianism around the world.

Under the guise of infrastructure development, the $1 trillion geopolitical platform snatches up other countries’ natural resources, including critical minerals for computer chip production, and expands its use of their ports for its own civil and military purposes.

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