Washington DC - Senior Chinese and American officials have agreed to strengthen cooperation between the two countries in battling the devastating global fentanyl trade.

In a Washington DC meeting, US and Chinese delegations held the first major meeting of a newly formed anti-fentanyl working group, which aims to impose stronger drug control measures across borders.

President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November last year at a San Francisco summit that ended with an agreement between Washington and Beijing to launch a US-China Counternarcotics Working Group mechanism.

This week's meeting was the first senior-level meeting since the working group formed in January and the first since Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the issue with Xi in an April meeting and focused on how to strengthen the coordination of law enforcement and better disrupt the financing of international crime gangs.

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On the US side, the delegation was led by Jennifer Daskal, President Biden's deputy assistant and deputy homeland security adviser. Wei Xiaojun, director general of China's Narcotics Control Bureau, led the Chinese delegation.

The delegations "exchanged their respective concerns, exchanged views and suggestions, and clarified the direction of cooperation," Chinese state media agency Xinhua was cited by South China Morning Post as saying.

In a statement put out by the White House, the Biden administration revealed that senior officials had reviewed the progress of the counternarcotics efforts, as well as recent arrests made by both the US and PRC.

"Discussions focused on ways to strengthen coordination on law enforcement actions; disrupt the illicit financing of transnational criminal organization networks," the statement read.

In addition, the working group looked into ways to "Accelerate the scheduling of synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals; address the illicit diversion of precursor chemicals; exchange information on emerging threats; and advance progress in multilateral fora."

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No further specifics have been released on the decisions taken by the US-PRC Bilateral Counternarcotics Working Group during the meeting. However, the White House did release a dot-point plan on X, formerly Twitter.

Specifically, the dot-point plan included increasing fentanyl seizures at the border, forging global counternarcotics cooperation, and making naloxone available for over-the-counter purchase.

"Far too many Americans continue to lose loved ones to fentanyl," the White House said on X. "Our Administration is taking new action to counter the scourge of fentanyl and stop the flow of deadly synthetic drugs into communities."