alt Hacker NewsIndeed. I believe it is retribution for the Opium Wars. Sure the US isn't the UK, but it's the successor Anglo empire and is obstructing China's return to their rightful place as global hegemon.
I think Xi Jinping and his CPC wish to inflict a Century of Humiliation on the West, or at least on the members of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Russia and Hungary, beware.
Unfortunately this game only takes one willing participant. We'd better get our heads in the game and begin to play. And we need to prepare for a proper hot war, too, although that's already well understood and those preparations are already well underway.
I was into the whole research chemical thing from maybe 2005 to 2011. People on message boards were doing like $30k+ group buys to get Chinese labs to synthesize new stuff. It was a really interesting time with a lot of money to be made and new chemicals to experience. I started hearing horror stories about people ODing on fentanyl and fentanyl analogues in 2011ish from middle men mixing up orders and mislabeling chemicals. That sketched me out enough that I didn't want anything to do with it anymore. It was very easy to buy fentanyl straight from Chinese labs until at least 2013 but maybe even as late as 2015 or 16. Fentanyl was legal in China until US pressure to ban it and that's when they started sending precursors to Mexico.