CHINA insisted today that it is up to the United States to “create necessary conditions” for anti-drugs co-operation.

This followed complaints from Washington that Beijing has ignored its calls for a crackdown on precursor chemicals for the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing that the Chinese government takes an “active part in international anti-narcotic co-operation and firmly opposes smears and unilateral sanctions on other countries under the pretext of the fight against drugs.”

He said: “We urge the US to correct wrongdoings with concrete actions and create necessary conditions for the two countries’ anti-narcotic co-operation.”

US diplomats and anti-drug officials have complained that China has ignored calls for closer co-operation on combating the production and sale of fentanyl precursor chemicals.

Washington and Beijing are at odds on a wide range of issues, from trade to Taiwan and US sanctions against the Chinese defence minister.

China was also deeply angered by a US Justice Department decision late last month to file criminal charges against four Chinese companies and eight individuals for allegedly trafficking the chemicals used to make fentanyl in the US and Mexico.

The indictments represented the first prosecutions to charge China-based chemical companies and Chinese nationals with illegally selling the chemicals used to make the drug, which has been blamed for a deadly overdose crisis.

The Chinese embassy condemned the charges, accusing the US government of seeking to blame others for its domestic drug problem.

Beijing has also complained about sanctions levelled against the Ministry of Public Security’s institution of forensic science for its supposed lack of action on combating the production and sale of fentanyl precursor chemicals, and rejected as fiction Washington’s claims that there is a pipeline of such substances from China to Mexico and then into the US.