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Stories of corruption at local and provincial levels of government are everywhere in China.

But they usually take the form of subtle bribery and business deals.

Andrew Livingstone reports on what looks to be a very visible example of local officials bending the rules to their advantage.

The new head of China's soccer federation has pledged to attack corruption and lift the Asian sporting power's lowly international ranking.

Wei Di said Tuesday the widely disparaged Chinese Football Association faces numerous "difficult hurdles," starting with restoring its public image.

Wei says the leadership must eliminate cheating and bribery. He also says "we should also look to our problems as a chance to start anew."

A sweeping probe of match fixing and bribery allegations has netted more than a dozen players and officials, including Wei's predecessor Nan Yong.

Soccer is widely popular in China, even though the men's national team is ranked No. 97 in the world.

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Toyota Bribery

Now there's been some heated online debate here following the news that a U.S. telecommunications company has been fined for paying millions of dollars in bribes to Chinese officials. UTStarcom, a maker of telecommunications equipment, has agreed to pay $3 million in fines to settle civil and criminal charges with federal regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the company's China subsidiary paid nearly $7 million between 2002 and 2007 for 225 overseas trips by employees of its customers. The trips were purportedly for training, but regulators say many of them were to tourist destinations, like Las Vegas and Hawaii.

The Commission also accused the company of spending more than $4 million on expense-paid programs for Chinese government customers at U.S. universities. The case of UTStarcom has not gone unnoticed here in China.

In today's Blog of the Day we look at a post by newspaper columnist Sheng Dalin who has written a blog about this on the popular news portal Ifeng.com.

The top-scoring students of this year's college entrance exam have just been announced. The pride of the community, they are often put on a public pedestal. But here's the case of where the champion students are being used to help sell underwear. Susan Tart has more on the social dispute.