Naw Kham was the ring leader of a large drug trafficking outfit based in the Golden Triangle – a mountainous drug-producing region in Southeast Asia covering areas of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

“One plan was to use an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to carry 20kg of TNT to bomb the area, but the plan was rejected because we were ordered to catch him alive,” Liu told the Global Times.

It is a noteworthy revelation as senior Chinese officials rarely make public acknowledgents about the country’s ability to project power overseas.

The disclosure also highlights the level of technological sophistication in terms of China’s ability to surveil targets in Southeast Asia. This will likely draw concern from the Asean neighbours wary of China’s military capabilities.

A report last year by the U.S. Defense Science Board described the pace of China’s drone development as “worrisome” and “alarming”, and suggested that Beijing might “easily match or outpace U.S. spending on unmanned systems, rapidly close the technology gaps and become a formidable global competitor in unmanned systems.” China’s drone programmes to date have focused on surveillance, however, particularly of its long coastline. A small Chinese UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle, was spotted in the East China Sea by a Japanese destroyer in June 2011, and both China and Japan have indicated plans to deploy drones over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

The Obama administration’s opaque drone campaign in the Middle East, on the other hand, may have claimed as many as 4,700 lives, fuelling anger in the region and some opposition within the United States. Observers have long anticipated that other countries would eventually join in: in an October op-ed at The Washington Post, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker warned that America was setting important precedents, and urged the adoption of clear standards and practices for drone warfare.

Others, from European allies to Russia, China and Iran, are acquiring and beginning to use drones for surveillance — eventually, they will use them for killing as well. What would we say if others used drones to take out their opponents — whether within their own territory or internationally? Imagine China killing Tibetan separatists that it deemed terrorists or Russia launching drone strikes on Chechens. What would we say? What rules would we urge them to abide by?

The drone strike plan also demonstrates the progress of China’s Beidou satellite navigation system, whose availability expanded in December to commercial users across the Asia-Pacific. From Jane Perlez at The New York Times:

China’s global navigation system, Beidou, would have been used to guide the drones to the target, Mr. Liu said. China’s goal is for the Beidou system to compete with the United States’ Global Positioning System, Russia’s Glonass and the European Union’s Galileo, Chinese experts say.

Mr. Liu’s comments on the use of the Beidou system with the drones reflects the rapid advancement in that navigation system from its humble beginnings more than a decade ago.

The experimental navigation system was started in 2000 and has since expanded to 16 navigation satellites over Asia and the Pacific Ocean, according to an article in Wednesday’s China Daily, an English-language state-run newspaper. The Chinese military, particularly the navy, is now conducting patrols and training exercises using Beidou, the newspaper said.

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Post tags: Barack Obama, drones, drug trafficking, drugs, Global Times, Mekong river, military technology, Myanmar, United States
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“Our company has delivery stations in every part of China,” boasts one Chinese-language Web site, with photos of illegal narcotics it sells. “We offer 24-hour delivery service to your door, and we have long-term and consistent supplies. If you just make one phone call, we’ll deliver to your hands in one to five hours.”

Another Chinese Web site offers meth wholesale for $19,700 a kilo, or deliveries to your door of smaller quantities in hundreds of cities around China. Even in remote Anhui Province, it delivers drugs in 21 different cities.

All this is completely illegal in China, where narcotics traffickers are routinely executed. But it doesn’t seem to be a top government priority, because these Web sites aren’t even closed down or blocked. Tens of thousands of censors delete references to human rights, but they ignore countless Chinese Web sites peddling drugs, guns or prostitutes.

Doesn’t it seem odd that China blocks Facebook, YouTube and The New York Times but shrugs at, say, guns?

Meanwhile, for Motherboard, Eveline Chao reports on the growing problem of methamphetamine production and use in China. As portrayed by the popular U.S. television show “Breaking Bad,” Mexico is the source of most of the meth in the U.S. But China is increasingly responsible for providing the chemicals that are used in the making of the drug:

Records of large drug busts involving meth in recent years–an increasingly common occurrence–tend to show a trail that leads back to China. Last January, the Mexican navy announced that a single bust had yielded 195 tons of meth chemicals in a Chinese shipment, following a six-week period that netted an additional 900 tons of precursor chemicals. In April, three tons of methylamine chloride, a chemical used in pharmaceuticals and pesticides, was found at LAX in a shipment from China; it was on its way to Mexico, where it was bound to be cooked into $40 million of methamphetamine for American consumers. The list gets longer.

American officials now estimate that 80 percent of the meth consumed in the US is Mexican-made–with ingredients from China. “The rising threat of new synthetic drugs requires a truly international response, and we look forward to extending our cooperative work with China to address the dangers that these substances pose to the citizens of both our countries,” Berit Hallberg, a spokesman for the White House’s drug czar, said in a statement to Stars and Stripes. James Rendon, the Coast Guard Rear Admiral in charge of the DoD’s Joint Interagency Task Force West, described the meth-from-China problem more simply: “It is a big problem, and it is getting bigger.”

In China–where crystal meth is generally called 冰 bing, or ice, and “doing meth” is called 溜冰 liu bing, or “ice skating”–the meth picture is a mirror image of that of the US. Both are large countries pocked with wide-open spaces that are ideal for homemade recipes of the smelly, noxious, explosive stuff. Whether you’re in Indiana or Shanxi, it’s in these rural spaces where meth consumption is most rampant, not least because it’s cheap and offers a lot of bang for your buck–users report a high that, unlike coke, lasts for hours.

Last week, NBC News reported on a drug bust in China which found almost 200 pounds of methamphetamines:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Post tags: drug addiction, drug trafficking, drugs, Gun laws, Internet control, nicholas kristof, prostitution
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Retail-price cuts averaging 17% will take effect Oct. 8 for 95 oncology, immune-system and blood-related drugs and 200 formulations, the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s main economic planning agency, said on its website Tuesday.

The overhaul of the health-care system aims to make doctor visits and pharmaceuticals more accessible and affordable, expanding the national health-insurance system to cover more diseases and to apply price controls to more drugs in the future.

Of every 100 deaths in China, 85 are now caused by chronic diseases, such as cancer, according to China’s Ministry of Health. By comparison, the U.S. rate is 70 per 100, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the world-wide rate is 63 per 100, according to the World Health Organization.

The government offers reimbursement of up to 50% for the 95 drugs on the list.

This is only the most recent price cut in pharmaceutical drugs. According to Business Week, China has cut prices more than 20 times since 2000:

The price cuts, effective October 8, comes as China seeks to rein in the rising cost of health care for its aging population. Policy makers are also expanding national health insurance coverage to include more major diseases, and adding to its list of essential drugs, for which prices are controlled by the government, Health Minister Chen Zhu said yesterday.

“This latest move was in-line with past drug price cuts of about 18 and 19 percent, so the market would see this as quite reasonable,” said Gideon Lo, an analyst with Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong. China has cut the price of drugs five times since 2009, and more than 20 times since 2000, Lo said in a telephone interview.

“Companies that have products that are focused on these specific therapies could see an impact to their prices,” Lo said. Companies that may be affected include Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. (600276), which focuses on oncology drugs, Hong Kong-based Lansen Pharmaceutical Holdings Ltd. (503), which makes immune system drugs, and Hainan-based Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd. (460), which makes both oncology and blood system medicines.

As the government continues to cut drug prices, there has been some concern over the impact on drug companies’ profit margins, but drug companies with higher diversification in the pharmaceutical market will be less affected. From Reuters:

“The NDRC has reduced the maximum retail prices, but in many cases these drugs will sell for less than the maximum price due to market forces, so it sounds a bit more scary for the manufacturer than it really is,” Mann said.

However, companies that may be impacted are oncology-focused Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co Ltd, and U.S.-listed 3SBio Inc which makes drugs for cancer, inflammation, kidney and infections diseases, Mann added.

“Because most Chinese drug companies are fairly diversified, they will have some exposure, but it will be limited,” he said.

See also China’s Battle for Drug Safety, via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drug industry, drugs, health care, pharmaceuticals, public health
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According to newly released figures from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security police have shut down 147,000 sites involved in the fake food and drug trade since August 2011. Over the same period the police have reportedly resolved 185,000 criminal cases linked to counterfeiting.

Information from the public played a big role in the anti-counterfeiting cases. The Ministry says the police paid 12,000 informants $4.4m for helping to identify and solve cases of fake food and drugs.

[...]Data on the success of anti-counterfeiting efforts comes as China tries to show publicly that it is taking control of the situation. From October the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) will blacklist manufacturers of fake drugs as part of the intensified anti-counterfeiting push.

Xinhua relays a drug safety supervisor’s forecast on what’s to come in Beijing’s campaign for drug safety:

In the latter half of this year, the SFDA will step up joint actions with other law enforcement agencies and government departments to curb counterfeit medicines, he [Yin Li, director of the SFDA] said.

Efforts will be made to improve the coordination among drug safety agencies from different regions as well as cooperation between the government and enterprises, he said.

In addition, the SFDA will start an inspection on the production of medicines listed as the national essential medicines in the next four months.

Despite Beijing’s recent efforts, China is still rife with counterfeit and contaminated drugs, and lacks the controls to keep them off the global market, according to a special report published by Reuters yesterday:

Four years ago, Beijing promised to clean up its act following the deaths of at least 149 Americans who received contaminated Chinese supplies of the blood-thinner heparin. But an examination by Reuters has found that unregulated Chinese chemical companies making active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) are still selling their products on the open market with few or no checks.

Interviews with more than a dozen API producers and brokers indicate drug ingredients are entering the global supply chain after being made with no oversight from China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), and with no Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification, an internationally recognised standard of quality assurance.

[...]The export of unregulated drug ingredients may be putting lives at risk, particularly in poor countries where local pharmaceutical controls are minimal. Medicines containing faulty active ingredients or the wrong dose do not work properly and can contribute to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of dangerous diseases, such as malaria.

[...]China’s dominant position in the global market for pharmaceutical ingredients makes the issue both pressing and hard to tackle.[...]

The Reuters report follows the investigations of Philippe Andre, a “Detective in the murky world of Chinese pharmaceuticals” (i.e. pharmaceutical auditor based in Tianjin). A slideshow of Andre’s, outlining the “supervision of Chinese-made drug substances“, can be found via PEW Health Group.

Also see prior CDT coverage of the 2008 herapin scandal, counterfeit medicine, drug safety, and other tainted exports.

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Post tags: contaminated drugs, counterfeit drugs, counterfeit medicine, drugs, pharmaceuticals, public health, public safety
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In the Report “A memory retrieval-extinction procedure to prevent drug craving and relapse” (13 April, p. 241), Y.-X. Xueet al. describe experiments conducted on rats and drug users in Beijing, China. Although the authors state that the study participants gave written informed consent and that the research was approved by the Human Investigation Committee of the Peking University Health Center, substantial questions about ethical protections remain.

The authors do not mention that the Beijing Ankang Hospital and Tian-Tang-He Drug Rehabilitation Center, where their study participants reside, are compulsory treatment centers run by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice (respectively), historically housing people detained without due process. Over the past few years, Chinese compulsory treatment centers have also begun accepting voluntary patients. The specific dates on which the research was conducted and whether the study participants in Xue et al.‘s paper were voluntary patients or held under administrative detention are not clear from the Report, nor is the standard of drug dependency treatment provided in either center.

[...]

But the Chinese can’t take all the blame: It turns out that U.S. taxpayers were also inadvertently supporting this work. Two of the co-authors on the original paper were scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is congressionally funded. In response to voicemails left at the offices of all five of NIDA’s media relations’ spokesmen, I received the following two-sentence email: “Good afternoon. In response to your voicemail, the study you referred to was not funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the whole truth. In a statement released to the Associated Press on April 22, NIDA explained that its scientists “advised on the experimental design of the preclinical studies, and were involved in the data analyses and in the preparation of the manuscript.” While NIDA didn’t provide direct funding for the study, they did contribute financial support for the paper by paying the salaries of David Epstein and Yavin Shaham, who provided technical assistance and whose names are on the published paper. NIDA’s claim that their only support was technical, though, would be in violation ofScience magazine’s guidelines — which state that all co-authors are responsible for the sum total of any article published in its pages — their own code of conduct, and standard scientific protocol. By allowing their names to be published on the study, NIDA’s scientists took responsibility for the entire contents of the article, including the ethics of the research.

Sadly, this is not the first such study supported by NIDA in Southeastern Asia with questionable rights abuses; it appears to be an ongoing, and under-reported problem. In 2011, Human Rights Watch reportedthat compulsory detention centers in Vietnam, where other NIDA studies were conducted, were engaged in similar kinds of arbitrary detention and forced labor.

In the study, the Beijing scientists tested a technique called “memory retrieval-extinction” to prevent drug cravings in heroin users. Other research had shown that presenting addicts with a reminder of their addiction, such as the sight of a crack pipe, without letting them experience the drug’s effects can make the cue less likely to trigger craving. But that effect fades within weeks or even days.

The study concluded that the technique works longer, up to six months, if the addict’s memories of the drug are first triggered (“retrieved,” via a five-minute video about the drug) before the link between the reminder and the drug is “extinguished.”

The scientists concluded that memory retrieval-extinction offers “a promising nonpharmacological method” for fighting addiction.

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Post tags: drug addiction, drug rehabilitation centers, drug users, drugs, forced labor, human rights watch, prisoners' rights, rehabilitation, U.S. relations
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The operation, involving around 18,000 police officers, discovered fake or adulterated drugs purporting to deal with illnesses ranging from diabetes to high blood pressure and rabies, the ministry said in a statement on its website (www.mps.gov.cn).

The suspects went so far as to advertise their drugs online, in newspapers and on television, and the drugs caused problems ranging from liver and kidney damage to heart failure, it added.

“The criminals’ methods were despicable and have caused people to boil with rage,” the ministry said.

The government has repeatedly promised to tighten regulatory systems after safety scandals involving fish, drugs, toys, toothpaste, children’s clothes, tires, drugs and milk fortified with melamine, used in the manufacture of tabletops.

Counterfeit or substandard pharmaceuticals produced in China have caused problems in other countries as well, including malaria medications sent to Africa and erectile dysfunction medications distributed in the U.S. and Europe. Read about another crackdown on an illegal drug network in China, from 2011, via CDT.

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Post tags: counterfeit drugs, counterfeit medicine, drugs, public health
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Mr. Solondz’s journey started in the fall of 2005, when he joined his mother in Italy for a wedding and then traveled around Europe and Asia. His parents say he stopped communicating with them in March 2006, just before the F.B.I. announced the charges.

The trail went cold until March 2009, when the Chinese police arrested Mr. Solondz here in the mountains of Yunnan Province after he was caught with drugs and fake Canadian identification, according to his parents. During a daylong trial last month, Mr. Solondz pleaded guilty to drug charges and asked to be deported to the United States.

According to his father, Paul Solondz, the Dali police said they discovered 33 pounds of marijuana buried in the courtyard of the house that the younger Mr. Solondz rented, as well as what the prosecutor described as a drug laboratory inside the house.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dali, drugs, foreigners in China, Yunnan
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Written before the global credit meltdown, “China High: My Fast Times in the 010: A Beijing Memoir” lifts a curtain on a side of Beijing seldom seen by tourists. ZZ captures the nocturnal buzz of a city where rave parties in derelict factories are a staple and orgies have become a rite of passage. Then there’s the pot, which locals call the Big Numb.

Beneath the froth lies a serious message: The world’s largest developing economy is seething in social tension, displaced people and hypocrisy. It’s a land of official sexual equality run by men who often keep under-30 mistresses, aka their “little honeys,” on two-year contracts. A country given to bouts of xenophobia among people who fawn on foreigners.

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Post tags: Beijing, book reviews, drugs, youth culture
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Chinese lawmakers adopted the country’s first-ever anti-drug law here on Saturday in a bid to curb drug-related crimes and reduce the growing number of users, especially under-aged addicts.

…The law, which will take effect on June, 1, 2008, was adopted at the weeklong 31th session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), or the country’s top legislature. [Full text]

[Image source: Reuters. Policemen prepare to destroy confiscated drugs at a campaign against drug abuse during a photo opportunity in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan province, June 21, 2007.]

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Post tags: crime, drug law, drugs, social order
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Lawmakers will review from Sunday a final draft of the bill with revisions that included raising the age limit for compulsory rehabilitation to 16 from 14.

Opium, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine hydrochloride — commonly known as “ice” — as well as morphine and cocaine were listed as banned drugs in the draft, Xinhua said. [Full text]

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Post tags: crime, drugs
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China’s pharmaceutical watchdog has warned 16 companies that they risk losing their advertising licenses after they published “illegal” ads that exaggerated the benefits of their products.

The 16 ads for drugs and medical equipment were identified by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) on its website Wednesday.

(...)
Read the rest of China Blacklists 16 Drugs, Medical Equipments Posting “Illegal” Ads – Xinhua (58 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: advertising, drugs, SFDA
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I have no doubt the SCMP report can be taken as read as I consider the author of the article – housemate, friend of ten years and a member of my journalism class – to be a very reliable source. He was present at the scene of the chaos on Friday night, having a beer outside the Saddle bar opposite Tongli Studios. I feel it is worth detailing exactly what happened, away from the constraints of a limited word count and the news story format.

At about 1am, a group of five or six men in camouflage uniform charged past the Saddle towards Poachers’ Inn. Their average age was around 18 and 19 – some looked as young as 16, others maybe 25 – and their scruffy appearance, straggly hair and gangly limbs made them look decidedly amateurish… [Full Text]

See additional blog entries on this incident:

- Strange fruit in Beijing from China Law Prof blog

- Beijing: Chinese police beat up Africans from Africabeat

- Excessive Force or Racism by Beijing Police? from China Expat

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Post tags: Beijing, drugs, police violence, racism, Sanlitun
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The unusual case of Zhenli Ye Gon, who was arrested in Maryland last week following the discovery of $205 million of alleged drug money in his house in Mexico City, underscores how the same process of global sourcing that ripped apart the integrated industries of the 20th century, replacing them with networks of production scattered around the globe, is reconfiguring the drug trade, too.

…This pattern of global sourcing also points to big changes in the economics of Mexican crime. Following Mr. Ye Gon’s arrest, the head of Colombia’s national police warned that Mexico and Colombia would have to prepare to do battle against Chinese and Russian organized crime. Mr. Ye Gon is the first Chinese-born to be charged of drug trafficking in Mexico in at least a decade, according to Mexican news media reports.

But the irruption of Mr. Ye Gon into Mexican drug trafficking is also emblematic of much broader changes as Mexico adapts to China’s emergence in the global economy. [Full text]

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Post tags: drug trafficking, drugs, mexico, organized crime
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After a drug ingredient from China killed dozens of Haitian children a decade ago, a senior American health official sent a cable to her investigators: Find out who made the poisonous ingredient and why a state-owned company in China exported it as safe, pharmaceutical-grade glycerin.

The Chinese were of little help. Requests to find the manufacturer were ignored. Business records were withheld or destroyed.

“The U.S. imports a lot of Chinese glycerin and it is used in ingested products such as toothpaste,” Mary Pendergast, then deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, wrote on Oct. 27, 1997. Learning how diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison used in some antifreeze, ended up in Haitian fever medicine might “prevent this tragedy from happening again,” she wrote. [Full Text]

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Post tags: drugs, FDA, food safety, tainted exports
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Flash-lit by synchronized lasers, a nightclub heaving with Hong Kong teenagers vibrates to the latest dance hit as a pair cavort on stage dressed in the skimpiest of outfits…

It’s a typical Friday night, but while many of the clubbers hail from Hong Kong the venue itself is not in their home city.

Welcome to Shenzhen, across the border in mainland China and an increasing draw for young people from Hong Kong in the 10 years since the former British colony was handed back to Beijing. [Full text]

Photo: Shenzhen nightclub by trey.menefee, via Flickr.

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Post tags: drugs, public health, Shenzhen, youth culture
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