SHANGHAI, Jul 10 -- ZHENG Xiaoyu, China's former top drug regulator, was executed this morning.

Zheng, former director of the State Food and Drug Administration, was sentenced to death on May 29 on charges of taking 6.49 million yuan (US$840,000) in bribes, and dereliction of duty. At least 21 people were killed by drugs he licensed.

Zheng was convicted of accepting bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies between June 1997 and December 2006. He even approved six bogus drugs, including an antibiotic that killed at least 10 patients last year.

Drug companies were said to give Zheng and his family money and shares to gain drug licenses or certificates to get medicines on shelves in pharmacies and hospitals.

The court found that Zheng acted presumptuously to lower the criteria for medicines in clinical trials, and allowed drug companies to obtain new licenses by falsifying data and information.

Consumer confidence in the country's drug industry crashed last year after a series of fatalities caused by substandard drugs.

Last July, Xinfu antibiotic injections, manufactured by Anhui Huayuan Worldbest Biology Pharmacy Company, killed at least 10 patients and caused severe reactions in more than 80 others. Two months earlier, 11 people died after being given fake Armillarisin A injections produced by Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, in Heilongjiang Province.

Media reports also said polyacrylamide hydrogel, an implant used in breast operations, was also approved while Zheng was in office. The substance was later banned after a 38-year-old woman died and other patients suffered complications.

Zheng was fired in 2005 on charges he took millions of yuan in bribes to approve untested medicines. He was expelled this year from the Communist Party of China.

Zheng's case prompted the central government to review 170,000 drug licenses, most granted between 1999 and 2002, when Zheng was in office. By August, the SFDA had issued licenses for 168,740 new drugs and established a data base for license numbers and the ingredients of all new medicines.

The country also re-examined drug companies that acquired a Good Manufacturing Practice certificate for registering new medicines in 2004 and 2005.

Zheng was appointed director of the SFDA when it was launched in 1998. Born in December 1949, he was the head of a pharmaceutical factory in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, until 1994.

In 2002, new medicines were required to gain SFDA approval before they could be sold on the market.