China is engaged in asymmetric warfare against the United States through covert support for fentanyl-trafficking drug cartels, according to an open-source intelligence report.
The Chinese Communist Party and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army are using fentanyl trafficking by Mexican cartels as a weapon against the U.S., the leader of global capitalism. That’s the conclusion of a 2025 report from the CCP Biothreats Initiative, a think tank staffed by former military and civilian intelligence experts.
The report identifies CCP links to Mexican drug cartels and their role in fentanyl shipments that are described as a modern version of what the Chinese call “shashoujian” or “assassin’s mace” weaponry.
The modern form of the ancient technique is designed to enable a weaker military to defeat a stronger power, in this case, the U.S. military.
The use of the strategic tool is part of the Chinese concept of unrestricted warfare. It calls for mitigating multiple conventional PLA shortfalls in facing off against more powerful U.S. and allies by using a range of asymmetric weapons and covert action programs.
“The CCP shows no signs of modifying or reversing its strategic intent to target, degrade and eventually dissolve the United States, conquer Taiwan, dominate the Indo-Pacific and re-engineer a new ‘international system’ based on Beijing’s dominance and absolute control,” the report states.
Ryan Clarke, one of three authors of the report, said information gathered in producing the report clearly shows Mexican drug cartel infrastructure inside the United States is multi-modal and can be directly utilized as an attack vector against the United States using biochemical weapons platforms under the assassin’s mace doctrine.
“This deliberately blurred line between non-state illicit criminal activity and state-driven hostile strategic operations is a signature of the CCP and its intelligence apparatus, including the United Front and state-owned Chinese enterprises,” said Mr. Clarke, a former intelligence official with extensive experience in Asia.
The report details how CCP-backed Mexican cartels are currently engaged in biochemical warfare against Western countries, with the greatest risk facing the United States.
“The effects have been devastating but are fragile and reversible once the massive information asymmetries regarding network structure are rebalanced,” the report said.
“The successful collapse of these syndicates in the United States will dramatically reduce the national security threats to our food and agricultural sector. The inverse is also true.”
The report, based on open-source intelligence gathered from China, found that the United States is the primary obstacle preventing the CCP from achieving its goal of global hegemony.
The PLA also knows that it lacks the conventional military power to achieve Beijing’s global strategic goal on traditional battlefields with kinetic weapons, a fact highlighted by the recent B-2 and Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
“As such, they have assessed that their only option to achieve their strategic aims is through ‘no rules’ unconventional warfare against the key ‘control points’ of the American system at home, specifically its food supply,” the report said.
Three Chinese nationals were recently charged by federal authorities in Detroit with working on research at a University of Michigan laboratory that could be used in agro-terrorism against U.S. crops and people.
Assassin’s mace for the PLA today means identifying key vulnerabilities in the overall superior U.S. combat power. Then, these conventional vulnerabilities are precision-targeted through planned surprise attacks that would shock and rapidly paralyze the United States’ ability to process events and respond effectively.
“American leaders and national security agencies face an exponentially increasing number of geographically distributed, networked, and highly adaptive Mexico-based threat groups that are actively engaged in covert biochemical weapons operations against the United States with CCP strategic sponsorship and enablement,” the report said.
President Trump in February declared a national emergency as a result of open borders and mass illegal immigration that included facilitating fentanyl trafficking.
Executive orders imposed tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada as part of efforts to halt the flow.
An order signed by Mr. Trump in February stated that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which exerts ultimate control over the government and enterprises of the PRC [People’s Republic of China], has subsidized and otherwise incentivized PRC chemical companies to export fentanyl and related precursor chemicals that are used to produce synthetic opioids sold illicitly in the United States.”
The report said the cartels operate seamlessly across national borders.
The essential precursor chemicals, pharmaceutical-grade pill manufacturing facilities and international money laundering capabilities are provided to the cartels by the CCP, the report said.
Covert warfare is described as a method of achieving military-style effects without clearly identifying the origin.
The report states that fentanyl-laced heroin is highly likely to either kill or severely debilitate a user over a short time frame, thus raising questions about whether the trade in the drug is purely commercial or whether there are hidden subsidies from CCP sources to maintain the market.
Also, synthetic opioids are not causing the same degradation of public order and human misery in Western nations like Germany, France or Italy, where “natural” narcotics like cocaine and heroin are available.
The report said the difference between U.S. and European drug problems is “CCP state sponsorship, organization, subsidization and strategic control” targeting the United States.
Chinese money laundering of fentanyl trafficking proceeds is another clue to Beijing’s role in targeting the U.S. population with the drug.
According to the report, “the CCP has fundamentally designed, implemented and exerts strategic-level control of a threat network structure that originates in Mexico and spans across the United States.”
“Presently this network is being utilized to move synthetic narcotics and launder illicit capital,” the report said.
“However, it is critical to realize that this is a multi-modal network which can be quickly repurposed, either in whole or in part, to move and deploy other types of unconventional weapons that directly threaten the American food supply.”
Key physical routes used to move synthetic narcotics combined with the high concentration of Mexican and other Latin Americans trafficked by the cartels to work in the American agricultural sector, pose “an acute and accelerating set of direct risks posed to America’s food security,” the report said.
“The CCP is the proven ‘world leader’ in the development of engineered zoonotic pathogens that can be deployed in clandestine settings.”
Chinese work on engineered and weaponized zoonotic pathogens is carried out by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, based in Harbin, China, which is part of a state agricultural research center.
The report said China’s role in fentanyl trafficking networks is complex, decentralized and compartmentalized, making it difficult to investigate and counter.
The report calls for fully mapping and gathering intelligence on the Chinese and Mexican networks involved in fentanyl trafficking.
Once a clear strategic intelligence picture is obtained, U.S. authorities can then conduct “precision strike options against CCP-sponsored synthetic narcotics trafficking syndicates and their threat networks inside the United States that are specifically vectored against our food and agriculture sector.”
