Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has for decades looked the other way – or worse – as fentanyl-pushing organized crime syndicates thrive in China, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer reveals in his new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.
Schweizer – who also serves as the president of the Government Accountability Institute – makes the case that China is “waging war against the United States without seeming to wage war,” through the use of drugs, weapons technology smuggling, a deluge of anti-American propaganda, and other operations. The triads, China’s fearsome criminal organizations, play a key role in this war by pumping the American illegal drug market with fentanyl, a deadly opioid fueling a terrifying spike in America’s drug overdose death rate.
Prior to rising to the chairmanship of the Communist Party, Xi was in charge of one of China’s most prominent triad hotspots. As dictator, Xi has welcomed triad members into one of the top legislative bodies in the country, allowed them to freely use heavily censored Chinese social media, and even maintained communication with a suspected major fentanyl distributor via underlings in Canada. By 2019, when the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests erupted, triad members were popping up in the formerly autonomous region to savagely beat protesters with sticks and metal rods with impunity.
Below, five bombshell revelations in Blood Money that connect the dots between China’s most powerful man and its most dangerous thugs.
1. Xi Jinping Governed Fujian Province as Triads Ran Wild There
Schweizer noted in his book that Xi served as governor of Fujian, across the strait from Taiwan, between 1999 and 2002, and spent 17 years in the province in other Communist Party capacities – “longer than anywhere else as a party boss.”
“Fujian has been notorious for not only how openly the triads and cartels operated but also how much they enjoyed the protection of local Communist Party and government leaders,” Schweizer wrote. “Organized crime figures received ‘political protection’ and ‘managed to escape detection’ in the province, according to an official Canadian report published by the United Nations.”
“During Xi’s tenure as a leader in Fujian, organized crime figures lived openly in the province,” the book continued. “For example, the head of the Green Dragons Gang of New York did so despite the United States having issued a warrant for his arrest on murder charges.”
The triads even owned a share of the Fujian Changle International Airport.
“What sort of government allows a drug-selling crime organization to own part of an airport?” Schweizer asked.
2. Xi Jinping’s Cousin Was Accused of Laundering Money for Triads and Other Criminals
“A cousin of Xi’s was a person of interest in an Australian government investigation looking into a ‘money-laundering front company’ that helped ‘suspected mobsters move funds in and out of Australia,'” Schweizer revealed. “The cousin, a Communist Party member, had previously been a member of the Chinese People’s Armed Police.”
The cousin appears to be Ming Chai, identified in multiple reports as a “high-stakes gambler” and a “VVIP” – “very, very important person.” Ming is an Australian citizen and “was aboard a private jet for high-roller gamblers when it was searched by federal agents on the Gold Coast in 2016 on suspicion that it was involved in international money laundering,” according to Australia’s The Age.
3. The CPPCC, a Pseudo-Legislature Xi Controls, Is Full of Triad Members and Associates
The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is one of China’s two federal-level legislative bodies. It meets, along with the National People’s Congress (NPC), annually for what China calls its “two sessions” to rubber-stamp legal decrees by Xi. Over 2,000 people are members of the CPPCC – many of them, Schweizer wrote, with ties to the triads.
BEIJING, CHINA – MARCH 10: Chinese President Xi Jinping (bottom) is applauded by members of the government as he arrives for the closing session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People on March 10, 2022 in Beijing, China. China’s week-long annual political gathering, known as the Two Sessions, convenes the nation’s leaders and lawmakers to set the government’s agenda for domestic economic and social development for the next year. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
“Suspected triad members involved in the drug trade populate the CPPCC,” Blood Money details. “Ng Lap Seng, the triad member who funneled money to the Bill Clinton campaign in 1994, was a member.”
“Stanley Ho, a gambling magnate and resort owner in Macau, also served as a member of that organization,” the book continued, “even though he had alleged ties to both 14K and Sun Yee On, triads that distribute drugs in the United States.”
4. A Canadian-Chinese Scientist Convicted of Helping Distribute Fentanyl Regularly Met with Xi Henchmen
The Zheng drug syndicate, which maintains an outsized role in distributing fentanyl in North Korea, relied on a Massachusetts-based Canadian scientist named Bin Wang to distribute its product. Wang “received parcels from China with narcotics smuggled within bulk shipments of legitimate chemicals from Wang’s Chinese companies,” Schweizer explained. Wang was ultimately convicted of drug crimes in America and sentenced to six years in prison in 2018.
“Wang’s case exemplifies the symbiosis between drug cartel members and the Chinese government,” Blood Money narrated. “While distributing fentanyl in the United States, Wang worked for Beijing to create a computerized platform to track chemical shipments worldwide.
Wang reportedly flew to China on a monthly basis and met with high-ranking “Chinese government officials to discuss his progress.”
5. The Triads Use WeChat – Which the Chinese Communist Party Directly Controls – to Freely Communicate
Giant organized crime syndicates like the triads require rapid, secure, and user-friendly communications. In the internet era, the triads did not have to look far for such a platform: WeChat, a totalitarian social media application designed to control the lives of every Chinese national.
WeChat “strives to be everything at once: a platform for chatting, shopping, gaming, and even banking,” the business outlet Quartz explained in 2014. Since the emergence of China’s “social credit system” in 2018, it has only grown more powerful. The app played a key role in the expansion of the Wuhan outbreak of a novel coronavirus in early 2020 by censoring doctors urging friends on private channels of an unknown infectious disease spreading in the city. One such doctor, Li Wenliang, was arrested and forced to issue a humiliating apology for urging colleagues to wash their hands; he died in mysterious circumstances in February 2020.
WeChat is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which Xi’s government owns a controlling share of.
The “Applaud for Xi” app by the Tencent Holdings Ltd. news division is seen on a arranged for a smartphone in an arranged photograph in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017. A day after the 19th Party congress kicked off with a marathon speech by Xi Jinping, Tencent rolled out a game to enlist its 1 billion users on WeChat in a clapping competition. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The drug-pushing triads appear to be succeeding where Li was doomed to fail. The asphyxiating Communist Party control over WeChat has done little to silence criminal communications on the app, Schweizer writes.
“Chinese organized crime figures involved in the drug trade also speak openly on WeChat, a Chinese messaging app,” he explained. “The Chinese government regularly monitors the app to suppress political dissent. But when it comes to drug trade chatter, it looks the other way.”
“The Chinese government is clearly aware of it. The launderers are not concealing themselves on WeChat,” Thomas Cindric, a retired DEA agent, is quoted as saying.
Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans is available now in hard cover, ebook, and audiobook.
