China's Breaking Bad: high school teacher turned basement chemist arrested by mainland police

A secondary school teacher has been arrested by Chinese police following a six-month investigation into his clandestine methamphetamine empire - the latest case in China to echo the story of Walter White, the main character in the US TV drama Breaking Bad.

The man, a 35-year-old named only as Lu, had once taught teenagers at a school in the city of Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous Region in south-west China.

But after becoming addicted to drugs and losing his job, Lu transformed himself into a basement chemist producing drugs at home in order to feed his own habit, the People’s Daily newspaper reported.

Photographs published in Chinese state media showed an array of chemicals and glass flasks laid out around the alleged criminal’s flat.

China has witnessed a surge in the use of meth - known in the country as bingdu - in recent years, with the substance overtaking heroin as the drug of choice for millions of addicts.