Police have arrested 22 people during a campaign to smash a drug ring that produced and sold 180,000 doses of diluted heroin in less than two years in northeast China.

Police in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, said they had destroyed three drug factories and seized more than 10,000 doses of heroin and 20 kilograms of the solution awaiting bottling as another 10,000 doses.

The police also confiscated 10 grams of heroin, 20 grams of ketamine, commonly known as "K", two vehicles and more than 700,000 yuan (95,100 U.S. dollars).

The first arrest in March was a man named Nie Bing, who sold "a lot of" heroin and never run out of stock, said a police spokesman.

An alleged core member of the ring named Yu Fei was arrested on a coach from Shenyang to the southeastern Fujian Province on Sep. 1. Police said his confession led to raids on the ring's three factories in Shenyang and the arrests of 14 more people the same day.

Four days later, Zhang Jinlong and Liu Shunzhi, both convicted of providing drug-making equipment and raw materials to the ring, were captured in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Fujian Province respectively.

They allegedly confessed that they had produced up to 2,000 doses of diluted heroin every day since the beginning of 2006, and sold 180,000 doses for more than 4.5 million yuan (610,500 U.S. dollars).

Police quoted the suspects as saying that the ring's heroin supply came from the southern Guangdong and Fujian provinces and additives for dilution from the local pharmaceutical market.

Police are still investigating the case.

(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2007)