Cocaine makes a splash in China

Cocaine has traditionally been considered a rich country's drug. It appears that segments of the Chinese population are now wealthy enough to create a market for this drug:

Chinese and U.S. agents seized more than 300 pounds of cocaine smuggled from Colombia — the country's largest ever cocaine bust — and arrested nine people involved in a drug ring in southern China, authorities said today.

The case illustrates how South American drug gangs are aggressively moving into Asia to exploit new markets and expand their global distribution chains, said William Fiebig, a Beijing-based agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"It's a market, a huge market," he said.

The seizure and arrests were made in March following a two-month investigation that was aided by key intelligence from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Liu Guangping, spokesman for the Customs General Administration of China. It was the first time Chinese and U.S. authorities had worked together on a drug investigation.

Most of the drugs were found hidden inside a wooden bed frame in Zhongshan, an industrial district in southern China just hours from the border with Hong Kong, Liu said.

Those being held include two Colombian nationals, along with suspects from Hong Kong and mainland China, according to Chinese customs officials and the DEA.

Liu said police uncovered a secret drug lab during their investigation. No details were given, although photos provided from the police raid showed bottles of ethyl ether — a key ingredient in making crack cocaine. Officers also confiscated the equivalent of about $25,000 in Chinese and Hong Kong currency, Liu said.

Following the communist revolution in 1949, China virtually wiped out rampant opium addiction that had crippled the economy and was seen as a symbol of China's weakness in the face of bullying by Britain and other foreign powers who initially sponsored the trade. Stocks were destroyed, traffickers executed and millions of users forced to quit cold turkey or be sent to labor camps.

Yet drug use came roaring back in the 1980s following economic and social reforms that raised disposable incomes and curbed some government intrusions into daily life.

Most of the recent drug problems — including the spread of AIDS — have been linked to the use of heroin that seeps across the border with Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle," as well as Central Asia's opium producing "Golden Crescent" region.

Yet, those woes now seem to be diversifying: Liu said Chinese agents have recorded a 435 percent rise in the amount of drugs seized in the first three months of this year from a year earlier, with almost half of them synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, Ecstasy and ketamine. The remainder was mostly heroin.

"It's pretty clear from this just how daunting a task we face," Liu said.

Rogene Waite, a DEA spokeswoman in Washington, said, "As more money comes into the Chinese economy, the market for drugs, unfortunately, grows concomitantly."

Footage on state television showed plainclothes officers tackling suspects from behind and throwing them to the ground on the street and in a department store.

Bricks of plastic-wrapped cocaine were shown stored in a cabinet in a police warehouse. An unwrapped brick held up by a reporter was shown imprinted with a traditional Chinese yin-yang symbol.

Fiebig said the investigation revealed an alliance between Colombian drug gangs and those from Hong Kong and mainland China to distribute cocaine in Asia.

Fiebig wouldn't reveal details of the investigation but said the DEA and customs authorities from Hong Kong and mainland China "shared intelligence, combined investigation resources and coordinated investigation activities, all in real time."

Officials said they were still preparing charges against the nine suspects, who potentially face the death penalty in China if convicted of smuggling. No requests have been received on behalf of the two Colombian suspects to extradite them from Hong Kong to their homeland, they said.

The Associated Press regurgitates this Chinese shibboleth - something that every Chinese knows but is false - as unobjectionable fact:

Following the communist revolution in 1949, China virtually wiped out rampant opium addiction that had crippled the economy and was seen as a symbol of China's weakness in the face of bullying by Britain and other foreign powers who initially sponsored the trade. Stocks were destroyed, traffickers executed and millions of users forced to quit cold turkey or be sent to labor camps.

Drugs have never crippled any country's economy. 2000-odd years of imperial rule saw no famines on the scale of the Great Leap Forward, a Communist development program that resulted in the deaths from starvation of tens of millions of Chinese. Drugs were readily available on a de jure or de facto basis throughout all of the years when the Chinese masses lived under an absolute monarch. Drugs are readily available in Western Europe and the G-7 countries because they lack the draconian measures - death for the possession of small amounts of drugs - imposed in China. And yet Western per capita incomes are ten times that of the average Chinese.

Even the bit about "foreign bullying" and "sponsorship" of the opium trade during the mid-19th century is an instance of lying by omission. Britain was involved in the opium trade at a time when opium was legal in Britain and China.* The Chinese then imposed an ostensible ban on opium that in reality tolerated inferior Chinese opium but banned superior foreign imports - in order to shore up China's deteriorating balance of trade.

* Many addictive drugs started being banned in the West only in the early part of the 20th century.