China announced a crackdown on doping in sport on Wednesday after a soccer player was banned for six months in the first case of its kind in the world's most populous country.

The new regulations, to take effect on March 1, add criminal penalties for serious offenders, said a sports official.

"Before, we had industrial rules to discipline sportsmen, now it's the government that stipulates regulations as the problem is becoming more and more serious," said Wei Hongquan, a press official at the State General Administration of Sports.

"Producers will have to label medicines with the words 'athletes use caution', just like the cigarette packets saying smoking is harmful to health."

Zhang Shuai, a defender with Beijing Hyundai who tested positive for the banned drug ephedrine in random testing in November, was suspended for six months by the China Football Association (CFA), the Beijing Youth Daily said on Wednesday.

"He could have faced a ban of two to four years and a fine of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,200), but received a lesser punishment instead after the CFA confirmed he had taken the drug unwittingly and the dose was small," the newspaper, quoted by Xinhua news agency, said.

China, host of the 2008 Olympic Games, has a long history of sports drugs scandals. It was widely accused of systematic doping after seven of its swimmers tested positive for steroids at the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima.

But the country has been on a clean-up campaign in recent years, dropping 27 athletes from its Olympic squad before the 2000 Sydney Games due to suspicious blood tests.

Last May, China fined or banned 34 athletes, mostly weightlifters and track and field competitors.

Apart from harsher punishments under the new regulations, if coaches or managers provide athletes with banned substances or deceive them into taking such drugs, they could be suspended for life and prosecuted, the China Sports Daily said.