 Zheng had been convicted of personally approving unproven and unsafe medicines after taking bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies while working as the former head of China's ministry of food and drug safety, bribes totaling more than 6.49 million RMB (or a rough equivalent of 850,000 USD), approvals which resulted in at least a hundred patient deaths, directly and indirectly.It was also discovered that during the eight-year period of drug oversight, Zheng personally ordered approvals of more than 150,000 new medicines, a number 134-times that of the U.S. FDA (which approves, on average, ca.140 new medicines annually).