Former university admission official arrested for bribes

A former admission official at a prestigious Chinese university has been arrested on charges of receiving huge sums in bribes, a Nanjing procuratorate announced on Friday.

Cai Rongsheng, former head of the admission office at Renmin University of China in Beijing, was accused of taking bribes of over 10 million yuan ($1.62 million) while providing aid to students during recruitment, according to the Nanjing municipal procuratorate.

Cai was put under official investigation on November 20 last year.

China's crackdown on corruption has spread to the higher education field.

Last December, Wang Liying, a discipline inspector sent by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China to the Ministry of Education, urged anti-corruption measures, including a thorough anti-graft investigation of Chinese universities' admission processes to ensure educational equity.

Wang said despite previous anti-graft efforts in the education sector, criminal and disciplinary violations in some key parts of the sector have not been fundamentally contained.

Following Cai's investigation, An Xiaoyu, vice president of Sichuan University, was also investigated for suspected discipline violations.

Also in December, Chu Jian, vice president of Zhejiang University in east China, was arrested on suspicion of occupational crime.