BEIJING — China executed its former chief drug regulator for taking bribes in a crackdown on fake medicine, a warning that the country intends to deal sternly with corruption.

Zheng Xiaoyu, 63, had been sentenced to death May 29. The state-run Xinhua News Agency reported his execution yesterday, and officials separately outlined a plan to improve drug and food safety, conceding the system isn’t strong enough and that the trend “isn’t promising.”

China, the world’s biggest exporter of consumer products, is under pressure to strengthen regulation after a series of scares ranging from contaminated toothpaste to drug-tainted seafood.

The approach of next year’s Olympic Games, which will draw an estimated 1.7 million visitors to Beijing, has increased the urgency of bolstering public confidence.

“Corruption in the food and drug authority has brought shame to the nation,” Yan Jiangying, the deputy policy director of the State Food and Drug Administration, said at a press conference in Beijing. “What we’ll have to learn from the experience is to improve our work to emphasize the protection of public safety.”

The Chinese government has used execution in the past as a way of showing it is “very serious about trying to get control over a problem,” said Ramon Myers, a senior fellow emeritus and consultant to the East Asian Archives at the Hoover Institution, a public-policy research center at Stanford University in California.

“They hope that by making a stellar example of someone very senior, as this man was, that it will have the effect of intimidating by terror,” he said.

Zheng was sentenced after he was found guilty of accepting bribes and gifts worth more than $850,000 while he was head of the food and drug administration between 1998 and 2005. The regulatory agency approved six types of fake medicines during his tenure, Xinhua said.

Zheng’s acts “undermined the efficiency of China’s drug monitoring and supervision, endangered public life and health, and has had a very negative social impact,” the agency cited the Supreme People’s Court as saying. A Beijing court on July 6 meted out another capital sentence, with a two-year reprieve, to Cao Wenzhuang, head of drug registration under Zheng, Xinhua reported.

Toothpaste and drugs linked to Chinese producers have been blamed for deaths in Latin America. American authorities halted imports of some Chinese fish, and Toys “R” Us Asia Ltd. recalled lead-painted “Thomas & Friends” railway toys made in China.

Melamine, used to make plastics, was found in pet food blamed for killing cats and dogs in America earlier this year.

The government said last month that by 2010 its ability to monitor drug purity should be “markedly” improved, while the food safety system should be capable of dealing with accidents and handling food recalls.

China said yesterday that it will rotate regulators into different posts and boost rates of drug supervision and sampling inspection to 80% from 30% as part of a five-year plan to reduce substandard products.

The drug regulator plans to improve transparency by accepting filings for drug approvals online, publishing results, and posting information on who evaluated the application, Yan Jiangying said at yesterday’s briefing.

Officials warned it will take as long as five years to upgrade standards in the industry.

Yan Jiangying declined to comment on whether a Chinese company implicated in the export of toxic solvent diethylene glycol that ended up in consumer products in Latin America has been punished.

China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine halted 14 companies’ exports of contaminated foods including preserved seafood and fruit to America, Canada, Europe, and Japan, the agency said on its Web site.

The items contained substances such as sulfur dioxide in excess of the importing countries’ regulations and harmful bacteria.