Chinese editor jailed for accepting bribes

BEIJING – The former editor-in-chief of one of China’s biggest newspapers, the Guangzhou Daily, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for taking bribes, the government said.

Li Yuanjiang was convicted by the Guangzhou People’s Intermediate Court for accepting bribes worth $60,300, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday.

He took the money between August 1991 and June 2001, when he was a city official and then editor-in-chief, Xinhua said.

Li was also fined $12,000, it said.

Thousands of Chinese officials and executives of state companies have been punished in a marathon crackdown on rampant corruption that threatens to undermine public acceptance of communist rule.