A BULLET IN THE HEAD FOR DRUG DEALERS IN CHINA

Admitting That Addiction And Trafficking Are Getting Worse, Beijing
Publicises Executions Across The Country

China has executed 10 drug traffickers in a synchronised operation to
dramatise its seriousness about fighting drug-related crime and to mark
International Anti-Drug Day.

Domestic consumption of drugs is becoming "more serious with each passing
day", according to an official white paper.

The official news agency yesterday circulated a picture taken on Monday from
Quanzhou in Fujian province showing two of the offenders being marched out
of a stadium packed with spectators, and off to the execution ground.

The two traffickers, Chen Xinyuan from Taiwan and Tsai Dehui from Hong Kong,
had been found guilty of smuggling large quantities of heroin into Taiwan.
They lost their final appeal in April.

Details of the case were published on a new website belonging to the Supreme
People's Court in Beijing which rejected their appeal.

Elsewhere across the country another eight traffickers were executed on
Monday to drive home the lesson. Executions in China are often preceded in
serious cases by a "sentencing rally" at which speeches are made denouncing
the crime, and the guilty verdicts are read out. The actual execution - by a
bullet through the head - takes place privately.

China's policy of exemplary execution has been criticised as "inhumane" by
Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, but it finds
favour with many Chinese who are alarmed by the growth of crime.

China's government State Council has reinforced the campaign in the white
paper, which acknowledges that "the situation is grim for the anti-drug
struggle." The document is the latest in a series of increasingly frank
statements about the rise in drug use and related problems, including HIV
and Aids. UN agencies and other foreign organisations say that Chinese
officials are now much more willing to discuss these problems seriously and
to take joint action.

The white paper on drugs seeks to suggest that the main problem lies outside
China. It says that since the late 1970s when Chinese frontiers became
easier to cross, "the illicit international narcotics tide has constantly
invaded China, and criminal drug-related activities touched off by transit
drug trafficking have re-emerged." The number of registered addicts has
risen from 148,000 in 1991 to 681,000 last year.

The State Council appealed to the Chinese people to rekindle the spirit of
the 1950s when, after the communist revolution, the use of opium was said to
have been wiped out in three years.

In another symbolic action on Monday, large quantities of confiscated heroin
and the methamphetamine "ice" were burned at Humen in south China. This is
where a national hero, Lin Zexu, burned thousands of boxes of opium
belonging to foreign traders in 1839.

Deeming Lin's action illegal, the British government of the day quickly
responded and this First Opium War led to Britain annexing Hong Kong.

More efforts to prevent Aids were urged at the weekend in a ministry of
health statement. It said that the spread of HIV and other sexually
transmitted diseases had become rampant in the past five years.

Most cases were found in rural areas and were spread by the sharing of
needles among intravenous drug users. Yunnan province, which lies on the
main drug route into China from south-east Asia's "golden triangle", has
reported the highest number of HIV cases.

The report said that China has registered 17,316 people infected with HIV to
date. But the UN Aids China Programme Office, at a recent workshop on HIV
surveillance, estimates the total number infected at half a million.

New cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) report ed in 1999 numbered
more than 800,000 - a rise of 33% over the previous year, according to Zhang
Guocheng, head of China's national centre for STD and leprosy control.

Professor Zhang estimates that there are now more than 8m cases of STD
nationwide. These had been virtually eliminated before the 1980s but have
spread widely as prostitution has re-emerged and social controls have
loosened.