GUANGZHOU, July 21 -- A court in south China's Guangdong province on Thursday upheld the ruling by a lower court to sentence the former head of a local newspaper to 11 years behind bars for graft.

The Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court announced the decision to reject the appeal of Dai Yuqing, former head of Guangzhou Daily, to an open court hearing of Dai's case held in December 2015.

The Intermediate People's Court of Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, found Dai took bribes totaling 2.47 million yuan (about 370,000 U.S. dollars) when he served as president of Guangzhou Daily, the official newspaper of the Guangzhou City Committee of the Communist Party of China, and as chairman of the board for both Guangzhou Daily Newspaper Group and an affiliated company of the group from 2006 to 2012.

During the above stated period of time, Dai was found to have accepted bribes from his subordinates and local hospitals in exchange for promotions and other personnel decisions and advertisements. He was detained following an investigation into economic discipline violations.

The Intermediate People's Court of Dongguan City handed out a ruling in a first-instant trial in April 2015 after it found Dai was guilty of bribe-taking, to sentence Dai to 11 years in jail and to deprive him of 500,000 yuan in personal assets. Dai managed to return 1.25 million yuan before the ruling of the first-instant trial was given.

On receiving the ruling by the Intermediate People's Court of Dongguan City, Dai appealed his case to the Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court.