Zhang’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking came to an abrupt end when he was arrested in Mexico on October 31, 2024.

A judge made the controversial decision to place him under house arrest, but Zhang managed to slip away (apparently through a hole in a wall) and flee on a private jet to Cuba and then Russia.

Russian border officials detected his falsified documents and sent him back to Cuba, which returned him to Mexico, from where he was extradited to the United States.

His arrest made headlines around the world. The alumni network of Peking University, where Zhang had studied Spanish, was stunned.

“Everyone was talking about it,” Alex says. “It was such a powerful story and he is probably one of the most famous people Peking University produced.”

In Culiacán, cartel members say Zhang’s absence was felt immediately.

Luis says that it became “very difficult to get the precursors.”

“They took the man and that caused a mess,” says Enrique. He says Zhang was “the one with connections” in China and that the cartels had to “start from scratch and build a new route.”

Around the same time, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began detecting a decline in fentanyl purity, which it said was “consistent with indicators that many Mexico-based fentanyl cooks are having difficulty obtaining some key chemical precursors.”

But disruption to drug supply chains is often temporary, in what Dittmar describes as a “constant game of cat and mouse.”

His research has tracked how, when middlemen are eliminated or key chemicals are controlled, fentanyl producers adapt by finding substitutes and learning new processes.

Individuals in the supply chain can also be replaced, even, according to cartel members, those as deeply and widely connected as Zhang is alleged to have been.

Enrique says there is already someone in the picture, another Chinese, but he says he can’t say more “for my own safety.”

Another cartel member, who describes himself as a coordinator responsible for the movement of goods and personnel within the cartel, says that although “this all started because of him [Brother Wang]… He left a lot of connections to help us move forward.”

“If he leaves, someone else will step in…business won’t stop.”

Additional reporting by Ruth Evans and Miguel Angel Vega