China executes the former head of its food and drug agency

By Joseph Kahn, The International Herald Tribune

Published: July 10, 2007

BEIJING: China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court carried out the death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, shortly after the country's Supreme Court rejected his final appeal.

Zheng, who had appealed his May 29 sentence on the grounds that it was "too severe" and that he had confessed to the bribery charges against him, became the first ministerial-level official put to death since 2000 and only the fourth since China opened it doors to the outside world nearly 30 years ago.

The official Xinhua press agency announced the execution but did not say how Zheng was killed. In most cases, the court police execute prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head, though recently the police have also used lethal injections.

China carries out more court-ordered executions than the rest of the world combined, according to human rights groups. But even by local standards, the sentence against Zheng was unusually harsh and its execution uncommonly swift.

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