China’s ongoing shadow war with the U.S. involves cleaning drug money for Mexican cartels so the gangs can fuel the deadly overdose epidemic and sow discord in American institutions, said an analyst who spoke to The Washington Times.
Beijing’s suspected silent partnership with the Sinaloa Cartel came into focus last week when federal prosecutors said a California-based money laundering scheme had wealthy Chinese nationals exchanging currency to conceal the Mexican criminal organization’s drug profits.
Prosecutors said they had no evidence that the Chinese nationals knew they were cleaning dirty money, but a former federal agent questioned how Beijing could be in the dark about the tens of millions of dollars moved by the operation. China aggressively surveils its citizens at home and abroad.
Beijing tacitly approves of the relationship with the cartels, the official said, because it erodes America from within.
“The Chinese basically are stirring the pot to keep America addicted … keep them divided,” Michael Brown, a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and now the global director for counternarcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices, told The Times.
“It’s part of a larger strategy, I believe, on the part of China, to weaken American ethics, morality and their ability to push back,” he said.
