The regional people's congress of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in south China, has announced the dismissal of Sun Yu from the post of vice chairman of Guangxi regional government.

The decision was made on Friday at the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee of Guangxi's 10th People's Congress.

The 50-year old official, from Zhuang ethnic group, took the vice chairman post in January 1998.

According to the Chinese magazine of Caijing, Sun received bribery worth 400 million yuan (US$54 million) during the construction of a major flood-control and water conservation project over the past three years.

Before the case of Sun, Guangxi had reported a series of corruption cases since 1999, involving former regional chairman Cheng Kejie and former vice chairmen Xu Bingsong and Liu Zhibing. Cheng received death sentence, and Xu and Liu had life imprisonment and 15 years in prison respectively.

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2007)