Chongqing’s flamboyant Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, has gained popularity nationwide with the high-profile clampdown, in what some analysts saw as a bid to shoehorn himself into the nation’s top political body during the 2012 leadership reshuffle.

The People’s Daily said on its website (www.people.com.cn) that the execution of the city’s former justice chief and deputy police chief, Wen Qiang, was carried out in the morning.

Wen, 55, was sentenced to death in April for protecting gangs, bribery, rape and “property scamming”, according to state media. He argued at his appeal trial that he had cooperated with the investigation.

Chongqing courts have sentenced dozens of people to death or long jail terms over the past several months as part of the crackdown in the sprawling city of more than 30 million.

The campaign was marked by graphic tales of murder and extortion committed by cops-turned-robbers, as citizens besieged government offices waving bloody photos and swords allegedly used by the gangs.

The trials were initially popular with the media and the public, who are fed up with police corruption and crime, but the rush to judgment has concerned some in the Chinese legal community.

A lawyer was earlier jailed for advising his client to testify he had been tortured while under investigation.

The deep ties between police and organized crime hark back to China’s tumultuous years before the Communist Party won power in 1949, when local warlords and rich businessmen had close connections with the criminal underworld.

Meanwhile a court in the northwestern city of Xian has begun hearing bribery and abuse of power charges against Zheng Shaodong, a former assistant minister of public security, Xinhua news agency said.

Prosecutors say that between 2001 and late 2007, Zheng took more than 8.26 million yuan ($1.22 million) in bribes in exchange for “promoting the interests of other people”, and abused his position to influence criminal investigations, the report added.