SHANGHAI, July 12 -- CHINA has overhauled its drug regulations and will carry out a series of measures to ensure the safety of medicines.

The announcement came one day after the state's former top drug regulator Zheng Xiaoyu was executed for taking bribes and allowing substandard medicines onto the market.

The new drug registration regulation takes effect on October 1, announced Wu Zhen, deputy director of the State Food and Drug Administration, during a press conference in Beijing.

The new regulations will strengthen research on documents and samples during the process of registering new medicines to prevent fake products, Wu said.

The drug watchdog will check documents and samples more strictly to ensure drugs on the market are the same as the medicines that were approved, according to the new regulations.

Wu said a group-evaluation system would be established and that the members of the group would be identified to the public. He added that the checking, examining and approving procedures would also be transparent.

The State Food and Drug Administration said in March it would revise the current registration process for new medicines and released a draft version seeking opinions from the public.

Wu also clarified that some previously reported information was taken out of context. Reports that the watchdog approved more than 10,000 kinds of new drugs every year were "not correct," he said.

Wu explained that of the 11,086 medicines approved in 2005, only 1,113 were new drugs. The others were either generic drugs or medicines that already exist on the market, but were slightly altered.