Beijing - China on Tuesday executed a Taiwanese citizen who was convicted of producing or selling methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs, state media said. Tseng Fu-wen was executed in the south-eastern province of Fujian, which lies close to Taiwan, after China's Supreme People's Court approved the death sentence, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The Xiamen Intermediate People's Court in Fujian sentenced Tseng to death last September.
Two Taiwanese accomplices were convicted of the same crimes.
Huang Yung-chin was given a suspended death sentence and the second accomplice, Huang Yung-fu, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the agency said.
Suspended death sentences are normally commuted after two years to life in prison, subject to good behaviour.
Tseng's execution was one of several reported on Tuesday for drug-related crimes ahead of the UN-sponsored international anti-drugs day on Thursday.
Prosecutors said the Taiwanese trio started making drugs in October 2006.
Police arrested them one month later in Xiamen after they bought 50 kilograms of ephedrine to make methamphetamine, commonly known as "ice."
The police also recovered 63.8 kilograms of ice, plus "varying quantities of other drugs such as heroin, and equipment and raw material in a workshop," the agency said.
China normally executes dozens of people convicted of drug production or trafficking in the run-up to the anti-drugs day.
A court in the southern city of Shenzhen on Monday announced that two drug traffickers had been executed.
Fuzhou, the provincial capital of Fujian, said that one drug dealer was executed "recently," state media reported, while several other cities announced death sentences for people convicted of drug-related crimes.
In 2001, China executed five Taiwanese citizens in Xiamen, among at least 49 drug dealers executed nationwide.
Amnesty International said it recorded at least 470 executions in China last year, far more than any other nation.
Amnesty said China's actual total of executions, which remains a state secret, was "undoubtedly much higher."
China has limited the use of death sentences in recent years but retains it for 68 offences, including drug trafficking, serious corruption and other non-violent crimes.
