Warning that narcotics posed a threat to social stability and economic growth, government ministers from China and three Southeast Asian countries pledged yesterday to step up cooperation in a war on drugs.
Ministers from Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and China meeting in Beijing agreed to work together to curb the cultivation, production and trafficking in drugs and boost surveillance along the Mekong River, according to a joint statement.
"At this stage, we face a very grave challenge," Yang Fengrui, director general of China's Narcotics Control Bureau, said.
"We are not only faced with traditional drugs like heroin but with other drugs like amphetamines," he said. "We need full and close cooperation to focus on this problem."
Drug addiction is growing in China, and the country has become an important gateway for heroin produced in the Golden Triangle, which straddles Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. Ahead of the meeting, Chinese state media said the four countries would speed up information exchange and jointly combat drug-related crime.
China State Councillor Luo Gan told the closed-door conference an expanding international consumer market for drugs and pressures created by Southeast Asia's economic woes were increasing drugs-related crimes in the region just as new types of drugs were flooding the market.
The China Daily quoted the Minister of Public Security, Jia Chunwang, as saying some 80 percent of illegal drugs entering China came from the Golden Triangle.
Sandro Calvani, the UN representative for Drug Control and Crime Prevention for East Asia and the Pacific, said China was a major producer of the chemicals needed to make amphetamine-type stimulants.
Chinese officials say the problem arises when chemicals produced for legitimate purposes are diverted to the drugs trade overseas.
"These chemicals are mainly produced for legitimate markets but in some areas it gets diverted for cocaine production," deputy secretary-general of China's National Narcotics Control Commission Wang Qingrong said on the sidelines of the conference.
"Although we do not have any problem with such chemicals in China, we have to be careful about exports to other countries to make sure it is not headed for South America for cocaine production," he said.
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