WITH the help of Thai police, Chinese police have arrested a man suspected of running one of China’s largest drug-producing and smuggling operations, reports said yesterday.Zhang Qisheng was captured in Thailand in October 2000 after allegedly fleeing there the previous year on a fake passport to elude arrest in China, said Chen Cunyi, officer in charge of illegal drug enforcement at the Ministry of Public Security.Thai police turned him over to China June 27, said Chen. Zhang was sought after police in Guangdong Province seized 12.36 tons of methamphetamine, a drug known on the streets as “ice” or “crystal meth,” at a warehouse in 1999, the official said.He said the drug, which had a street value of more than US$1 billion in the United States, was manufactured at a factory discovered later that same year in Ningxia, 1,800 kilometers north of Guangdong.Zhang is alleged to have headed the entire operation. Chen described it as China’s largest methamphetamine bust ever. The amount seized was equal to the total methamphetamine confiscated worldwide in 1998.Zhang faces the death penalty if convicted. A Hong Kong man, identified as Zhuang Chucheng, was sentenced to death last December by a Shenzhen court for smuggling 513 kilograms of the drug.China has imposed harsh penalties on drug criminals in the hope of stemming an epidemic of addiction that is largely responsible for the rapid spread of AIDS throughout the country. <2001>(SD-Agencies)