It's not very often that China paints a gloomy picture of its cooperation with foreign partners on sensitive matters, but its recently released report on the narcotics situation painted an extremely gloomy picture of the country, raising the question of whether neighbouring Burma has finally managed to exhaust Beijing's goodwill.
Releasing the report, National Narcotics Control Commission vice chairman Chen Cunyi told a press conference on Thursday that the types of drugs and the quantities being produced, especially in the Golden Triangle region, were on the rise and their flow into the country was increasing.
"At present there is a flood of international drugs, and the numbers of countries and regions where these drugs are going is increasing," Chen said. "Faced with this situation, there is no room for optimism in China's fight against illicit drugs."
The report said that while an ongoing effort to stem the tide of heroin from the Golden Triangle had resulted in a 16-per-cent drop in heroin production there last year, China was still at the receiving end of a problem it had tried hard to contain. The warlords in the region have turned to producing synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, which are flooding Chinese cities, the report said.
"The Golden Triangle remains the drug source threatening the most serious harm to China," the report said. "Although the area planted with opium poppies in the region has decreased sharply, the vast majority of heroin manufactured there is still trafficked into China."
Last year police in China's southwestern province of Yunnan confiscated 2.6 tonnes of methamphetamine manufactured in the Golden Triangle, about 48 per cent of the total confiscated nationwide during the period and a 154-per-cent increase over 2004, it said.
Heroin remained the choice of 78 per cent of China's drug-users last year, the report said, with more and more of the drug coming from the "Golden Crescent" region, the world's largest opium-growing area in Afghanistan.
In 2005 Chinese police investigated 1,500 drug-trafficking gangs, destroyed 34 drug labs and seized 6.9 tonnes of heroin, 5.5 tonnes of methamphetamine, 2.3 tonnes of opium and 2.34 million tablets of ecstasy, the report said.
For generations China has treated the opium-infested Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle as more than just its backyard. At the height of insurgency in the region, China dispatched dozens of Red Guards to the area to help get the ethnic rebels into shape and indoctrinate them in Marxism. One rebel group, the Wa, even gave up headhunting on the ground that it was not compatible with Communism. Some of these Red Guards decided to stay on and cash in on the illicit drug trade.
Despite the fact that China constitutes a major market for these illicit drugs, Beijing has never really held the military government of Rangoon accountable for the flood of narcotics pouring into the country or jumped up and down like the Thai government to demand that the junta do more. Perhaps there is understanding in Beijing that the generals in Rangoon do not have full control over their country, especially in the opium-rich, rebel-controlled autonomous regions situated just south of Yunnan.
Chen's outspoken pessimism was not very China-like, considering that the Communist giant tends to paint a rosy picture of things that bear its signature, like its cooperation with Burma on countering narcotics. On the diplomatic front, whenever Burma gets scolded by its Asean friends, the generals in Rangoon can count on Beijing to give them needed comfort and salve their bruised egos.
But while statistics show that the Chinese people suffer tremendously from addiction to drugs coming from Burma's sector of the Golden Triangle, the Chinese authorities continue to treat the drug lords with kid gloves.
One wonders if the lax treatment has to do with the fact that these drug lords were once Red Guards or whether it is because their money helps the local economies and greases a few palms along the way. Perhaps Beijing still has plenty more goodwill left after all.