AFP/Beijing

Beijing police have detained a motorcyclist who touched a speed of 237 kilometres per hour (147 mph) on the city's ring road, state media reported Sunday, after the stunt went viral on the Internet.

The man, identified by China's official Xinhua news agency only as Peng, reached the speed during a lap around Beijing's 37.5 kilometre Second Ring Road in the early hours of August 22, according to the report.

His feat, which took just 13 minutes and 43 seconds, became an Internet sensation and was seen more than 220,000 times on a Chinese video sharing site, Xinhua said.

But police apprehended the 30-year-old Peng in the faraway southern province of Guangxi and he was sent back to Beijing on Saturday, the report said.

Beijing Traffic Administration police said he was detained for dangerous driving.

High-speed hi-jinks are  a nuisance on the capital's roads and highways.

Two unemployed men who crashed a Lamborghini and Ferrari as they reportedly staged a "real-life Fast and Furious" race through Beijing in April were sentenced to jail terms of up to five months and fined for dangerous driving, a court said in May.

And a high-speed Ferrari crash in Beijing in March 2012 killed the son of Ling Jihua, a close ally of then-president Hu Jintao. Two women passengers, one of them naked, were both injured.

The incident added to public perceptions in China of corrupt and high-living officials, and Ling has since been investigated for alleged graft and dismissed from the Communist Party.