China Pledges to Help U.S. Curb Asian Heroin Trade

A senior U.S. narcotics control official said Friday that he has received “strong pledges of cooperation” from Chinese police in battling the flow of heroin from Myanmar through China to the world.

Melvyn Levitsky, assistant U.S. secretary of state for international narcotics matters, said southern China has become a major route in international heroin trafficking over the last few years. Drug abuse also has risen in China, Chinese officials say.

Closer anti-drug cooperation would mark one bright spot in U.S.-Chinese relations, which have been severely strained by American criticism of China’s imprisonment of dissidents, trade barriers and weapons sales.

Levitsky spoke at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy after spending two days with Chinese police and customs officials. He said neither he nor they were able to estimate how much heroin passes through China on its way to Hong Kong and world markets, including the United States.

“I certainly would say over the past few years a much, much higher percentage of it is moving through China than you would have seen three to four years ago,” he said. “Whether that’s 30% or 20% or 50% is hard to say.”

Levitsky said the main reason is a doubling of the opium crop in Myanmar, formerly Burma, since 1989. Myanmar and China share a long border through mountainous jungle terrain. Legitimate border trade has grown in recent years, and with it the drug trade.

Chinese officials, worried about growing drug addiction among their own people, agreed to increase the amount of information it shares with the United States, Levitsky said.