Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

Since US President Donald Trump – just days into his second term – began imposing tariffs on China for its role in the flow of deadly opioids like fentanyl into the United States, Beijing’s message has been clear.

The fentanyl crisis is the “US’s problem,” Chinese officials have repeatedly said, and China has already done “tremendous work” to address the issue.

“We stand ready for practical cooperation with the US based on equality and mutual respect. That said, we firmly oppose the US pressuring, threatening and blackmailing China under the pretext of the fentanyl issue,” a spokesperson said in March, after Trump’s fentanyl tariffs were raised to 20% on all Chinese imports into the US.

But as those tariffs remain in place months later and, despite a truce de-escalating other duties, Beijing is signaling it’s paying attention to the issue – and may be prepared to do more.

China late last month announced it will add two more fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances – an expected step that brought it in line with international regulations, which its diplomats presented as a mark of “active participation” in global drug control.

Days earlier, Chinese authorities also extended control over another class of drug known as nitazenes – powerful synthetic opioids raising alarm among global health officials. The same day, Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong told US Ambassador to China David Perdue that Beijing was open to strengthening “practical cooperation” on drug control.

The Trump administration blames China for “sustaining” the influx into the US of fentanyl, a lab-made, synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than heroin. Abuse of the drug and its analogues has fueled a drug overdose crisis in the US, killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, though those numbers saw a significant drop last year.

In Beijing’s view, it’s gone above and beyond international norms to stem the outflow of the drug and its component chemicals from its vast pharmaceuticals sector. In 2019 Beijing controlled fentanyl as a drug class – a significant move that drastically reduced the flow of the finished drug directly from China to the US, according to experts and US officials.

It didn’t take long for criminal networks to adapt, however. Chinese outfits shifted to selling precursor chemicals often to cartel-backed labs in Mexico, which then make and ship illegal fentanyl and similar drugs to the US. Chinese authorities have since controlled a number of these precursor chemicals. But experts and US officials say more could be done – as Beijing remains the largest source for products used to make illegal fentanyl and other synthetic drugs in Mexico and other countries.

Chinese officials haven’t explicitly linked their recent efforts at controlling two more of these substances to relations with the US, instead calling them another example of the “goodwill China has shown,” and continuing to reject the premise of the US tariffs.

But Beijing is likely expecting it will get credit for the latest moves in trade negotiations with the US. The question, however, is whether the steps will move the needle for Washington – and whether the two sides will be able to cooperate on the issue if their overall relations remain rocky.

“If Washington does not publicly recognize Chinese steps and show responsiveness to Beijing’s own concerns, then bilateral law enforcement cooperation likely will falter going forward,” said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

As US-China ties have chafed on everything from technology to China’s militarization of the South China Sea, few issues have appeared more personal to American leaders than China’s role as a producer of the drugs and chemicals fueling an opioid crisis in the US.

During his first term, Trump hailed Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “wonderful humanitarian gesture” of designating fentanyl a controlled substance in China.

Some six years later, however, Trump began his second term accusing China of “actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens” – an accusation vehemently denied by China.

That message also contrasts with assessments from the US Drug Enforcement Agency which, in an annual report released in May, said fentanyl purity declined throughout 2024, consistent with indications that fentanyl cooks in Mexico were having trouble obtaining key precursor chemicals. That was as some China-based suppliers were “wary of supplying controlled precursors … demonstrating an awareness on their part that the Chinese government is controlling more fentanyl precursors,” it said.

Beijing’s latest moves to control the two additional fentanyl precursors and nitazenes are positive actions that could have an impact on illicit drug supply chains, experts say.

But they are also “clever maneuvering” from China, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution.

A UN convention on illicit drugs added the two fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances last year, meaning signatory countries such as China must follow suit. China controlled a number of nitazenes in 2024 and the latest step, which expands those controls, was already in the works last fall, Felbab-Brown said.

“The Trump administration just reset the clock, did not recognize what China had already done and had committed to do, did not give China any credit for that. As a result, it also now is in a position where China can be promising to do exactly the same actions that it had promised to the Biden administration and use that as part of the bargaining,” Felbab-Brown said.

A “more effective posture” would have been to embrace China’s efforts in 2024 and then ask it to fill in the “substantial and impactful” holes in its drug control program, she added.

Beijing has fiercely defended its record when it comes to controlling fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, releasing a 7,000-word white paper outlining its efforts in March, days after Trump imposed his second raft of fentanyl-linked tariffs.

It has also balked at a Congressional report released last year accusing the ruling Chinese Communist Party of directly subsidizing the manufacture and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates.

In China, where the Communist Party keeps a tight grip on all aspects of society, there’s comparatively limited opioid abuse, according to official data – a situation Beijing uses to suggest the problem is about American appetite for the drug, not Chinese supply.

That also means Chinese officials feel they’ve gone out of their way to work with Washington on a US domestic issue – efforts they see as being greeted first by a lack of American appreciation, and then by tariffs.

Scientists in China on the front lines of identifying new precursors being used by criminal groups also point to reducing demand in the US as a key factor, given the challenges of controlling chemicals involved in synthesizing opioids.

“You really can’t solve the fentanyl problem through control alone… the most fundamental issue is still reducing demand,” Hua Zhendong, deputy director of a drug analysis division at a counternarcotics laboratory under China’s Ministry of Public Security, told CNN in an interview last September.

He pointed to how some chemicals have widespread use in legitimate products, making them impractical to control, while chemicals used to make fentanyl can be easily adjusted to evade rules but still produce the product.

“It’s always been like a cat-and-mouse game, because there could be thousands of potential substances for synthesizing fentanyl, we can’t proactively control them all – we can only passively follow behind,” said Hua, whose lab was working regularly with US counterparts at the time of the interview to share information on emerging chemicals.

Outside observers agree that US efforts to curb demand are critical for mitigating the opioid crisis. They note too that even if no chemicals came from China, fentanyl makers would look to other countries with large pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries, such as India.

Despite the challenges of enforcement in a vast sector where goods are often shipped in covert ways by busy air and sea routes, observers also say that more can be done in China.

That includes tightening regulations to enable tougher punishments for people who sell controlled precursors to criminal groups or their middlemen unknowingly. Experts also say more could also be done to enforce existing regulations, especially in terms of how central government edicts are enforced by local authorities across China.

“Scheduling drugs and precursors that lead to the production of illegal drugs is one step of many needed in China,” said David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND, a US-based think tank. “I would suggest better still would be actually preventing Chinese companies from selling and distributing these harmful chemicals and drugs to criminal organizations in Mexico.”

In addition to China, Trump placed tariffs on Mexico and Canada earlier this year, accusing them of not doing enough to curb migration and fentanyl trafficking, but carved out significant exemptions to those tariff rates. The US earlier this year designated Mexican cartels it alleges are involved in fentanyl trafficking as foreign terrorist organizations.

“China is a command economy with extreme control of its population – I think if the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want Chinese companies doing this, the CCP could do more to stop it, and be more effective in stopping it,” Luckey said.

An annual US State Department report on narcotics controls released in March described China’s “significant steps” working with the US last year to reduce precursor exports, which it said included cracking down on online platforms and companies selling them, making arrests, and adding 55 synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals to control lists.

China’s Ministry of Public Security last month said it had seized more than 1,400 tons of various precursor chemicals, and 151 related criminal cases were resolved in 2024.

But authorities in China also acknowledge the scope of the problem, with a recent report noting that channels and means for smuggling chemicals out of the country “were increasing” and “constantly being updated,” creating “greater challenges.”

Beijing – which seeks to present itself as a responsible global player – has its own reasons for not wanting to be seen as an international purveyor of illicit drugs. But Chinese officials have long linked cooperation with the US on the issue to the health of the broader relationship.

China cut off drug control cooperation completely in August 2022 in retaliation for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. It then took a friendly summit between Xi and former US President Joe Biden in late 2023 to get collaboration back on track.

This time around, China has bristled at the Trump administration’s off-the-bat imposition of tariffs, saying it “undermines” cooperation. The White House did not respond to a CNN request for comment on China’s latest control steps.

“If the US truly wants to cooperate with China, it should face up to the objective facts, correct its wrongdoing, and seek dialogue with China,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said last month when asked whether those measures were done in cooperation with the US or at its behest.

But Beijing is also keenly aware that the current tariffs are hitting at a time when China’s economy has already been struggling with domestic challenges – and there’s no certainty those duties couldn’t rise again under Trump’s capricious trade policy.

“Since the 20% tariff is specifically linked to cooperation on fentanyl, the Chinese might be hoping for a package deal that includes trade, counternarcotics, among other things,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

“The Chinese hope to remove the 20% tariff … (and are) eager to get President Trump to visit China this year, so they need to work out good progress,” she said.

Taipei, Taiwan
CNN
 — 

Silwanus Tangkotta was working aboard a Taiwanese fishing boat in the remote Pacific last year, when a heavy wave slammed a rolling metal door onto his hand, crushing his middle and ring fingers.

The Indonesian migrant fisherman needed medical attention, but the captain refused to return to port, saying they hadn’t caught enough fish to justify the trip. For over a month, Tangkotta endured the searing pain, forced to wrap the wound in tape and pick at exposed bone with a toothpick to prevent infection.

“I did whatever I could… I took nail clippers and toothpicks to destroy the protruding bones,” he told CNN. “I thought if I didn’t pull out the bone, the infection would continue and my fingers would rub.”

Tangkotta’s ordeal, while harrowing, is far from an isolated incident.

Taiwan operates the world’s second-largest distant-water fishing fleet — supplying tuna, squid and other seafood to supermarkets across the world, including the US and Europe.

The self-governing island is widely promoted as a beacon of liberalism and human rights in Asia, being a vibrant democracy with a relatively strong record on equality – for example, being one of only three Asian jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal.

But its treatment of migrant workers has come under growing international scrutiny, raising questions about its commitment to these values.

Since 2020, the US Department of Labor has listed Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry as showing signs of forced labor, highlighting issues such as deceptive recruitment, withheld wages, physical violence and extreme working hours.

In a statement to CNN, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said the US Department of Labor’s reports were based on “unverified” information provided by NGOs, and described migrant fishermen as “important partners” in Taiwan’s fishing industry.

The agency said Taiwan was “one of the few” jurisdictions to “have implemented a concrete action plan on fisheries and human rights.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor said it was working with the fisheries agency “to pragmatically safeguard the rights of distant-water migrant fishermen and to assist in enhancing relevant protection measures.”

Yet migrant workers like Tangkotta still face severe abuse, often without significant public attention, in part because they remain politically and socially marginalized.

Hailing from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, Tangkotta, now 38, began working on Taiwanese vessels in 2019, attracted by promises of better pay to support his family. In Indonesia, fishermen often earn less than $100 a month, an amount dwarfed by Taiwan’s minimum of $550.

But the reality was harsher than he expected. Aboard a medium-sized fishing vessel, Tangkotta spent up to four months at a time in the unforgiving Pacific, working 18-hour shifts with only brief rests in between. While the boat was designed for 23 crew members, only 16 were on board. Food was insufficient and often ran out quickly, he said.

But a bigger problem was extreme isolation. The boat had no internet, cutting the crew off from their families and preventing them from seeking help.

That isolation became critical when Tangkotta was seriously injured. The boat was near the Solomon Islands, about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) from Taiwan, when the door crushed his fingers. With no way to call for help, he had no choice but to remain on board while the captain prioritized profits. When he was eventually transferred to another vessel weeks later, it too continued fishing rather than heading to port.

“I felt helpless, and the pain made it hard to sleep,” he said. “I was disappointed because the only thing on my mind was that I needed to go to land as quickly as possible.”

A month later, he was hospitalized in Taiwan with two lost fingers, but was immediately handed a termination letter – not because of the injury, the company said, but because his position had ended. As a result, he was denied compensation.

The Fisheries Agency said it received a report from the fishing vessel about Tangkotta’s case, and he received treatment from the captain throughout the trip.

“The case was reported to a shore-based doctor, who assessed that there was no immediate danger,” it said. “The captain continued to provide care for Mr. Tangkotta based on the doctor’s advice.”

CNN has reached out to Tangkotta’s previous employer and Indonesia’s representative office in Taipei for comment.

Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry depends on more than 20,000 Indonesian and Filipino workers, but political will to protect their rights is lacking, said Allison Lee, co-founder of the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union, which is based in a fishing port in northeastern Taiwan.

“Even though the US has labeled Taiwan’s fishing industry since 2020, the government responded with rhetoric but very little was changed,” she said, adding that many workers were promised decent salaries but faced overwork and delayed wages.

Unlike most migrant workers in Taiwan, distant-water fishermen operate under a different set of rules and are excluded from Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act, meaning they lack protections for overtime pay and health insurance that others are entitled to.

“There’s a very serious problem with overwork,” Lee added. “Some migrant workers were told there will be 10 crew members on board, but only four were on board and they had to work very long hours.”

Even basic safety measures were ignored, she said, with some told not to wear life jackets because they “got in the way” of their work.

In 2023, 10 Indonesian crew members aboard the You Fu vessel were owed 15 months of wages, while they were out at sea with no way to contact families or verify payments, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. The fishermen were forced to eat bait with instant noodles due to food shortages, and faced routine verbal abuse, it reported, adding the salaries were eventually settled after the owner came under mounting pressure from media coverage.

Wage theft is one of the most widespread problems faced by migrant fishermen, said Achmad Mudzakir, a fisherman who serves as the leader of FOSPI, a Taiwan-based NGO that supports other crew members.

His organization regularly receives complaints about unpaid wages — with devastating consequences for families. “It is kind of painful because when we work hard at sea, we face high risks and we put our lives at stake. The late payments impact our families back home,” he said.

One solution, Mudzakir said, is requiring WiFi access for all migrant fishermen, because it would allow them to check their pay and seek help from NGOs, even from the middle of the ocean.

Regulations preventing migrant workers from switching jobs without returning to their home country or paying new agency fees should be scrapped, he added, because they discourage workers from reporting abuse for fear of dismissal and incurring debt.

In response to its inclusion on the US forced labor list, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said it has introduced reforms since 2022 – including raising minimum wages, installing CCTV on boats, and hiring new inspectors to improve working conditions. But activists like Lee criticized the measures as cosmetic, saying they were aimed at improving Taiwan’s image rather than addressing the root causes of forced labor.

Adrian Dogdodo Basar, a former Indonesian migrant fisherman, echoed calls for reform after seeing one of his closest friends die aboard a Taiwanese fishing vessel in 2023.

While working in the Pacific Ocean, his friend fell seriously ill with swollen legs and stomach pain. Adrian said the captain refused pleas to return to port, citing high costs, and offered only expired medicine. After several months – before the vessel returned – his friend died.

Adrian said he was punished with food deprivation and threats of salary deductions when he demanded the body be returned home immediately. “We asked him to just go to the nearest port to send the body home, but the captain denied us,” he said. “When I started protesting, I was not given any food.”

Like other migrant fishermen, Adrian paid more than US$2,000 in agency fees to secure the job – a debt that prevented other colleagues from speaking out, for fear of losing their work.

While these abuses may seem distant, Taiwan is the world’s seventh-largest seafood exporter, with its catch ending up on dining tables around the globe – meaning seafood on supermarket shelves may have been caught by exploited workers.

“American consumers are still at significant risk of consuming seafood tainted by modern slavery,” said Sari Heidenreich, Greenpeace USA’s senior human rights adviser. “It is essential for companies importing seafood from Taiwan to scrutinize their supply chains much more rigorously.”

Earlier this year, four Indonesian fishermen filed a landmark federal lawsuit against US canned-food giant Bumble Bee Foods, which is owned by Taiwanese seafood conglomerate FCF Co, alleging that the tuna giant “knowingly benefitted” from forced labor, debt bondage and other abuses in its supply chain. It is the first known case of fishing boat slavery brought against a US seafood company, Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, told CNN.

As for Silwanus, who now relies on friends and relatives, he hopes no one else has to endure what he did.

“I hope that all my friends – all my brothers – who work aboard Taiwanese vessels receive proper treatment if they are injured at sea,” he said.

“I hope this only happens to me, and not again to other fishers.

CNN
 — 

An official report on the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade has answered one key question – but raised others.

Air India flight AI171 had barely left the runway last month when it lost momentum and crashed in a densely populated area of India’s western city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.

Now, a preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has revealed that fuel supply to both engines was cut in the crucial minutes as the aircraft was ascending.

The plane’s “black box,” its flight data recorder, showed that the aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one,” the report says. The switches were flipped within a second of each other, halting the flow of fuel.

On an audio recording from the black box, mentioned in the report, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he flipped the switches. The other pilot responds that he did not do so. The report does not specify who was the pilot and who was the co-pilot in the dialogue.

Seconds later, the switches on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were flipped the other way to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines were able to relight, and one began to “progress to recovery,” the report said, but it was too late to stop the plane’s gut-wrenching descent.

The report reveals the fundamental reason why the jet crashed, but much remains unexplained.

The findings do not make clear how the fuel switches were flipped to the cutoff position during the flight, whether it was deliberate, accidental or if a technical fault was responsible.

On Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners, the fuel switches are between the two pilots’ seats, immediately behind the plane’s throttle levers. They are protected on the sides by a metal bar.

The switches require an operator to physically lift the switch handle up and over a detent – a catch – as they are deliberately designed so they can’t be knocked accidentally.

Geoffrey Dell, an air safety specialist who has conducted numerous aircraft accident investigations, finds it hard to see how both switches could have been flipped in error.

“It’s at least a two-action process for each one,” he told CNN. “You’ve got to pull the switch out towards you and then push it down. It’s not the sort of thing you can do inadvertently.”

According to Dell, it would be “bizarre” for a pilot to deliberately cut fuel to both engines immediately after take-off.

There is “no scenario on the planet where you’d do that immediately after lift-off,” he said.

Pointing to the fact that both engine switches were flipped within a second of each other, Dell noted: “That’s the sort of thing you do when you park the airplane at the end of the flight… You plug into the terminal and shut the engines down.”

One possibility the report raises relates to an information bulletin issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2018 about “the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature.” But, given that this was not considered an unsafe condition, Air India did not carry out inspections.

Dell said an aircraft’s flight data recorder should help explain how the fuel switches were flipped in each case. However, India’s AAIB has not released a full transcript of the conversation between the two pilots. Without it, Dell says it’s difficult to understand what happened.

Former pilot Ehsan Khalid also believes that the report’s findings raised questions over the position of the vital engine fuel switches, which, he said, should be clarified by the investigators.

Speaking to Reuters, Khalid warned against pinning the blame on the pilots. “The AAIB report to me is only conclusive to say that the accident happened because both engines lost power.”

He added: “The pilots were aware that the aircraft engine power has been lost, and pilots also were aware that they did not do any action to cause this.”

A full report is not due for months and India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu, said: “Let’s not jump to any conclusions at this stage.”

The Air India jet took off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat on June 12, bound for London Gatwick.

Air India had said 242 passengers and crew members were on board. That included 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. Everyone on board was killed, except for one passenger.

The 19 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel.

Air India has acknowledged that it has received the report and said it will continue cooperating with authorities in the investigation.