China and Mexico have some common ground in regards to drugs, the foreign policy of a world power, and an incredibly disruptive effect on their respective societies.
The history of how Great Britain forced China to take Afghan opium in trade, creating a nation of addicts and draining China of their hard currency, facilitating what China remembers well as the "100 years of humiliation" is not a proud one for the West.
US policy to make certain drugs illegal, resulting in the vast, illicit market that exists today and that is so disruptive to Mexican society and governance seem benign by comparison, but is nearly equally damaging all the same.
In both cases there was indeed an occupation by policy that created and is creating negative resistance energy against the perceived agents of their respective hardships.
It all comes down to a question of "how do the people feel, and who do they blame." Here is where ideology comes into play, as ideology is the tool to intensify these feelings and to direct blame in some particular direction.
America deluded itself that China hated the Europeans, but that they liked us. We saw them as a critical partner in the early days of the Cold War for containment of Sovietism. It was a rude shock that sparked the entire "Domino Theory" in South East Asia when Mao prevailed and China made very clear that they saw the US in the exact same light they saw the European powers who had occupied and oppressed them over the previous century.
This forced us to abandon key US concepts, such as the right of self-determination, when we had to expand containment from Sovietism to the much broader "communism" that was resonating with peasants weary of sharecropping small plots across SEA. It also led to the US promoting more heavily democracy as a political counter to communism. The proverbial slippery slope that began us on the path to our current NSS and its highly ideological tone.