A really bad news day for Mr. Zheng

If you think things were bad at the Bloomberg news desk on Tuesday, this guy got some really bad news.

China executes ex-food and drug chief
By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 10, 7:49 PM ET

China executed a former director of its food and drug agency Tuesday for approving fake medicine in exchange for cash, illustrating how serious Beijing is about tackling product safety, while officials announced steps to safeguard food at next summer's Olympic Games.
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During Zheng Xiaoyu's tenure as head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1997 to 2006, the agency approved six untested drugs that turned out to be fake, and some drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference Tuesday highlighting efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.
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Zheng's death sentence was unusually severe even for China, which is believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the communist leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record.

Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the food and drug agency.

He was sentenced to death on May 29 and his appeal was rejected on June 12 by the Higher People's Court of Beijing. China's Supreme Court approved the sentence, saying Zheng "committed vile crimes and caused extreme harm to society."

"Although he confessed to some of the crimes of bribe-taking and returned some of the illegal income, it was not enough for leniency," the court said.

That's one way to discourage corruption, though, at least ten people did die as a result of his misdeeds.

It sounds pretty routine for the Chinese justice system but strikes a very strange chord here in the U.S. - public officials being executed for corruption. In the U.S., even if people did die, you'd still expect the offending bureaucrat to be sent off to some low-security country club prison.