This year is the 100th anniversary of the 1909 anti-opium conference, which was the first attempt to render drugs illegal. An international conference on the anti-opium trade was held in Shanghai a full century ago. Recently, the Chinese government carried out solemn activities in this east China metropolis with the participation of senior representatives from 17 countries, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the UN International Drug Control to mark the centenary of the landmark Anti-opium Conference.
The Chinese government has always attached utmost importance to cooperation in international drug control; it has earnestly been implementing international obligations for drug control and supports and pitches in global narcotics affairs with the highly responsible attitude of a big developing nation.
To date, China has acceded to all of the three U.N. conventions on narcotic drugs a nation is obliged to implement; it signed, among other documents, bilateral anti-drug cooperation agreements and the memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with 18 countries. With regard to regional or sub-regional anti-drug cooperation, the Chinese government has taken an active part in joining or deepening the mechanism of MOUs on anti-drug cooperation for East Asia sub-region, the ASEAN and China Cooperative Operation in Response to Dangerous Drugs (ACCORD), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which, founded on June 15, 2001, now groups China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In strict compliance with the related international conventions on narcotic drugs or regional and bilateral mechanisms for cooperation, the Chinese government has, on a host of occasions, sent its representatives to partake in varied international anti-drug conferences or symposiums sponsored by INTERPOL, or the highest international police organization, and other international organizations, and hosted anti-drug conferences itself for the East Asia sub-region, the Association of Southeast Asian region (ASEAN), China and the SCO.
In the last 10 years or so after the U.N.'s global anti-drug strategy was set at a special session of General Assembly on June 8-10, 1998, the Chinese government has prompted the enaction of anti-drug laws, codes or statutes and related working mechanisms, further enhanced narcotics control measures, and effected a sustainable improvement in the nation's anti-drug situation.
Moreover, China has continuously beefed up or strengthened exchanges or cooperation with countries concerned in the field of education concerning anti-drug prevention and detoxification. It has actively joined activities of ACCORD relating to drug prevention and deduction on demand for narcotics. And the country has had a frequent exchange of visits with Thailand and Russia in the sphere of reducing demand for drugs.
In the realm of anti-drug law enforcement, Chinese anti-drug law enforcement departments or institutions have cracked a large number of big influential cases involving the production and trafficking of methamphetamines and other narcotics, destroyed several underground drug workshops and arrested several drug cartels both inside and outside China's border.
China has provided, to the best of its capability, comprehensive training in this regard for the relevant countries. In 2008 alone, it offered 12 anti-drug training sessions for approximately 200 law enforcement officers from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has offered 500 million US dollars to tobacco farmers on substitutions crops in Northern Myanmar and Laos or as aid grants or technical support, and it had provided Myanmar with 20,000 tons of rice between 2006 and 2008 as an emergency aid to ensure that the tobacco farmers would not return to planting poppy due to their hard life; China has also provided Laos with a total sum of 50 million US dollars in grant aid for setting up a detoxication or rehabilitation center. Thanks to joint efforts of the international community, the situation has turned apparently much better in the "Golden Triangle" region, and the poppy acreage had been reduced to 29,000 hectares in 2007 from 158,000 hectares in 1998.
By People's Daily Online and contributed by PD reporter Ding Dawei
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