The Journal. - Why Chinese Fentanyl Factories Are Making Peptides Now

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

The world’s biggest chemical industry is in China. For years, Chinese factories have also been a major producer of ingredients used to make fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has contributed to thousands of deaths in the U.S. After a recent crackdown in China, WSJ’s Patricia Kowsmann reports that some of those same factories are now entering a new booming US market: bootleg peptides. Imani Moise hosts. Further Listening: - Peptides Are Everywhere. Businesses Are Cashing In. - How Cocaine is Flooding in Europe Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a chemical exists, there's a good chance that a factory in China can make it and sell it for less than almost anyone else. Now, there are tons of, like, super legit Chinese chemical producers. That's our colleague Patricia Kousman. She's based in Singapore. And then there's, like, a whole layer of underground ones. So when you say underground, what type of products were they selling? This Chinese chemical producers, they are the big providers. of fentanyl ingredients, which of course became a big issue in the U.S. We are in the midst of the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.

The drug is fentanyl. Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid. It's at least 50 times more potent than heroin. The synthetic drug fentanyl has been having and is having a devastating effect on our communities all across these United States. Today, fentanyl continues to be the leading cause of overdose deaths in America. According to the Government Accountability Office, there were almost 50,000 deaths from synthetic opioids in 2024 alone.

For almost a decade, the U.S. government has been trying to crack down on Chinese companies that produce the raw ingredients that eventually get turned into fentanyl. They're called fentanyl precursors. These Chinese fentanyl precursor producers, they basically sold this to drug cartels who put together these ingredients, which the end result was the fentanyl, and then those were sold in the market. Chinese precursor suppliers have been making tons of money

from the illegal drug trade. But with a recent crackdown in China, these manufacturers have started entering into a different market, a market that's exploding across the U.S. So they kind of pivot to what is the next big thing, and right now the next big thing is peptides. So what went through your mind when you connected these dots? Of course, there's like Chinese producers

that have sold fentanyl precursors are not telling these people. By the way, I sold fentanyl precursors and here's a peptide for you. But behind it, you have these companies that have sold fentanyl precursors to a drug cartels.

And the question that I had was, do people really know who they're buying from? Do they even really know what they are buying? Welcome to the Journal. our show about money, business, and power. I'm Imani Moe's. It's Wednesday, October 7th.

Coming up on the show, the Chinese company is pivoting from fentanyl ingredients to peptides. The chemical industry in China is the biggest in the world. There, factories have the capacity to make pretty much any kind of drug imaginable. One particular company that Patricia looked into is called Henri Rinchan. Their chemistry company, they sell chemicals, that put together will create a drug. And they sell some drugs that could be in final form.

Think of them as a lab that will produce whatever is in demand outside. Henri Renchen never responded to Patricia's request for comment. But there's a website that says the company was founded in 2015, with the factory northwest of Shanghai. Okay, so I think now is a good time to look at the website. The site seems pretty user-friendly, and it's in English. Let's talk about the pictures. What do you see in the pictures?

Completely random products that look like just pure chemistry, like substances, that we wouldn't absolutely know what they mean unless you know what you're looking for. There's little dishes with white powder. There is some yellow powder on a dish, and there's a liquid in one of those. kind of lab flasks. And if you scroll down a little bit, what you see is names of the products that they're selling, that to us means nothing.

It's like very complicated. A lot of them have numbers rather than names. Across the site, there's clickable icons with colored powders and crystals in decorative ceramic dishes. They have labels like ibermectin, gabapentin, and something called metanidazine. It's almost like a little, I don't know, It reminds me when I was like, you know, studying chemistry in high school and looked at these things and chains of amino acids put together and it's just completely foreign to me.

However, the people buying these things, they know exactly what they want and they know the names of it. So can anyone just go on this site and buy these things? Yes, you can. If you look, you know, there's a leave your message form where you say, give your name, your email, your phone or WhatsApp, and basically say what you're looking for and just hit send, and supposedly someone's going to reach out back to you with the information. The numbers and emails listed on the site are no longer in use. But for every product, Henri Ren Chen says they guarantee delivery. If a buyer is worried about customs, the site says, quote,

our customs clearance company will clear your parcel without any customs issues. This kind of feels like how you end up on a watch list. Like a government watch list. Absolutely. I mean, this company has gotten to government watch list. About five years ago, the U.S. Justice Department started looking into Henri Ren Chen. In an undercover investigation, a confidential source posed as a buyer seeking fentanyl precursors. What has happened is that this producer said, yes, right, we can actually ship that to you in the U.S.

In 2023, the Chinese company shipped fentanyl precursors to an address in New York. Later that year, the DOJ indicted on Rie Wren Chen for allegedly supplying fentanyl ingredients used by drug cartels. What did that indictment mean practically? Clearly the website is still up, so they didn't go out of business. Yeah, so it's interesting. What happened is, you know, so the Americas indicted as Chinese companies, as you can imagine they're in China. They have no obligation whatsoever to answer to any indictment that's taking place in the U.S. So the end result of the indictment is zero.

For years, the United States has put pressure on China to crack down on precursor producers. Chinese authorities have been slowly reacting imposing export controls. And that development poses a big threat to companies like Henri Wren Chen. So you do see a lot of these websites and these companies kind of shutting down or having to find new ways of surviving. One of the ways of surviving is, okay, let's maybe stop selling the fentanyl precursor and shift to something else that is in high demand. So that's when you see a lot of this company is shifting to peptides. And the market that's driving that new business in China is Americans.

That's next. For years now, the Internet has been buzzing about peptides. So on social media, you have a whole number of influencers out there who spend their days, in fact, like trying this peptides, inject themselves, like changing the way they look. The new trend in beauty and wellness is peptides. Most people don't know this is an anti-aging peptide as well as a recovery peptide. There's peptides that make you tan. It makes your skin produce more melanin, and it helps prevent sunburn,

and it literally makes you tanner at the same time. So instead of going to those. spending beds and spending a few minutes there or whatever, like, just let's get a peptide. Or going outside. Or going outside, I mean. But you know, you do have these influencers on social media really pushing this product, saying how amazing they are. What if I told you there's a peptide stack that can transform your skin, boost your metabolism, and optimize your overall health? Even Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he's a big fan.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides. I've used them myself. and use them with really good effect, you know, with a couple of injuries. But what does the scientific community have to say about all this? Are they supporting the claims that these solutions do what they're advertised to do? No. I mean, the scientific community, I think, is pretty careful with this. The FDA has approved a range of peptides, but definitely not the vast majority of it. So the vast majority of peptides out there are still not approved by the FDA

and are still not even approved by, you know, scientists who say, okay, this is supposed to do what these people are saying it's doing. The FDA has approved some peptide-based drugs like GOP-1s for weight loss. But in order to get experimental peptides, some consumers are turning to a gray market. Before 2025, the sort of peptide market was quite niche and very underground, that there was just like about $200,000 in monthly purchases done in cryptocurrencies. But in 2025, so last year, this market started to grow,

and this year, suddenly, it really skyrocketed. So now peptide purchases in crypto have basically surpassed $10 million a month. And at least some of that $10 million a month is going to Chinese companies currently or formerly in the fentanyl trade. One analytics firm says that out of more than 200 companies that sold fentanyl precursors, at least 50 are now selling peptides. One thing that these analytic firms found that was quite interesting is that selling peptides is probably more profitable for these Chinese companies than selling fentanyl precursors.

Because the fentanyl precursors, you had to sell that to a drug cartel. According to one analysis, pivoting to peptides has not only been seen. safer for these manufacturers, but also potentially more lucrative. That's partly because with peptides, the product can be sold directly to the end consumer rather than a middleman like a drug cartel. But one thing that hasn't changed is the way these companies conceal their shipments to U.S. soil. Fetinal precursors often come to the U.S. in mislabeled boxes. The same is now true for peptides.

So they fill the form for the exports, court, saying this is just a snack. you know, closing the boxes, sending the boxes. He arrives in the U.S., the U.S. reads snacks, and then ships to that door of the person who bought the peptide when the person opens it. It's not snacks, but it's peptides.

Is that legal? No, that's not legal, and it's one of the issues that Americans are having with these companies that, you know, this product should not be entering the U.S. this way. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on specific companies. From October of 2025 to the end of August, CBP reported over 2,400 seizures of shipments of illicit pharmaceuticals.

But many still get through. It's just a lot of boxes coming through, and it's very hard for any authority to be able to open every single one and make sure that what's inside is what's being professed should be inside. And while the Chinese government has clamped down on fentanyl precursors, peptides haven't been given the same oversight. The issue here is not them selling peptides or sending pepses outside China, it's up to the countries receiving this product, whether they find it legit

to accept those products, or if those products are in fact substances that could be entering the country. What surprises me the most is not this company selling these things. What surprises me is that there are people willing to buy. To Patricia, on the consumer side, this is almost a fast-fashioned approach to chemicals you inject into your body. It doesn't matter what the product is, as long as it's a person. it's cheap and convenient.

Peptides are popular and they're less scrutinized. So by that logic, what these Chinese manufacturers have done is just a wise business move. They just feel like they are goods company. If the thing that's hot right now is peptides, that's what they're going to go for. Just think of like, I don't know, it's a clothing company. Whatever is hot, we're going to make a new new of it. If it's a new like, you know, coat that everybody's like loving it, That's what we're going to make and that's what we're going to sell.

They're no different. So what do you think this story says about the business of wellness right now? We are in this phase where because a lot of these peptides have not being approved or even like properly tested, it's just out there in this gray market. And there's like a lot of people trying to profit off it. So you have the Chinese chemical manufacturers coming up with this product, selling them anywhere in the world that you want. And what it's telling is, like, this industry has become so out of hand. You have both the supplier side super happy to give you whatever you want.

And it seems to be having the consumer side really desperate and happy to get whatever they can get from whoever they can get to just look. better. That's all for today, Wednesday, October 7th. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.