Updated January 18, 2019 16:23:33

Photo: Cai Dongjia went on trial in 2016 and was found to have manufactured and sold 180 kilograms of crystal meth. (Reuters: Stringer)

Cai Dongjia, the 55-year-old Communist Party chief of a Chinese village once notorious for its drug production has been executed, Chinese state media reports.

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State media called Cai "the godfather" of his village, Boshe, in the Lufeng area in the southern province of Guangdong, which supplied more than one third of the country's crystal meth.

According to Xinhua news agency, during his six-year tenure as the party chief of Boshe, Cai used his power as the area's most senior official to produce drugs and provide protection for local dealers.

Chinese authorities said 20 per cent of the village's households were involved in the production of the drug.

Cai was captured in December 2013 during an elite paramilitary police raid in which 3,000 police officers arrested 182 suspects from 18 different drug rings and seized three tonnes of crystal meth, more than half a tonne of ketamine and 23 tonnes of raw materials.

He went on trial in 2016, where he was found to have manufactured and sold 180 kilograms of crystal meth.

The court also ruled that he tried to bribe police to free other traffickers the police department had arrested.

Cai was sentenced to death for smuggling and manufacturing drugs and harbouring criminals.

His appeal was ultimately dismissed.

Topics: drug-offences, law-crime-and-justice, crime, drugs-and-substance-abuse, community-and-society, china, asia

First posted January 18, 2019 15:17:42