(240910) -- DALIAN, Sept. 10, 2024 (Xinhua) -- Members of Team China react after the 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifiers match between China and Saudi Arabia in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province. (Xinhua)

DALIAN, China, Sept 10, (AP): China’s Football Association has banned 43 people for life over allegations of match-fixing and other forms of corruption in the latest effort to weed out graft in the country’s notoriously underperforming team sport.

The official Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday reported that Zhang Xiaopeng, a top police official, attended a news conference in Dalian to release details of a “two-year investigation that uncovered a series of online gambling, match-fixing and bribery cases.” Xinhua said 120 matches in domestic leagues, 128 criminal suspects, and 41 clubs were implicated in the investigation. Of those banned, 38 were players and five were officials working for various clubs. Former Chinese internationals Jin Jingdao, Guo Tianyu, and Gu Chao were among those to receive life bans from the sport.

Other players and officials were given shortened bans, including foreign players lured to China by the promise of high salaries. South Korean Son Jun-ho, who played for China’s Shandong Taishan FC, and Ewolo Donovan of Cameroon, who formerly played for Heilongjiang Ice City, were given five-year bans. Son’s activities “seriously violated sports ethics and sportsmanship, causing a significant negative impact on society,” according to the federation’s statement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to make China a football superpower, but the men’s teams haven’t found much traction. Pledges to build new pitches and hire staff have fallen short as the economy struggles to regain its feet following the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan trounced China 7-0 last week to open the third round of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. It was China’s most lopsided loss against Japan, a geopolitical rival in Asia. China was No. 87 in the latest FIFA world rankings for men’s national teams, just below Curaçao (population 150,000), and just above Equatorial Guinea (1.7 million).