A senior Chinese official has called for improvements to public livelihoods, ethnic unity and frontier security in southwest China's Yunnan Province, a region bordering Myanmar.

Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said during an inspection tour of Yunnan between October 27 and 29 that public security organs should strengthen border inspections and crack down hard on drug smuggling and terrorism.

Zhou's visit came just over a month after a Myanmar drug runner and five of his gang members stood trial for the murder of 13 sailors on the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle Region on October 5, 2011. Naw Kham, the principal suspect, pleaded guilty to murder in a local court in Yunnan. The verdict has yet to be announced.

Visiting the public security bureau in Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, which investigated the murder case, Zhou extended his gratitude to its contribution to seizing the suspects.

Zhou, also secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of the CPC, praised the Kunming City Intermediate People's Court in the provincial capital for its innovation in hearing the murder case.

"It was a severe transnational criminal case, which attracted great attention from the Party, government and people," Zhou said, adding the case was solved with the assistance of relevant nations and China's law enforcement authorities.

He also extended his condolences to the families and colleagues of those who gave their lives investigating the case.

Xinhua