BEIJING - A former head of one of China's most AIDS-ravaged counties has been arrested for taking bribes, state media reported.

Yang Songquan, former Communist Party secretary of Shangcai county in the central province of Henan, is accused of taking at least 100,000 yuan ($12,500) in bribes over a river treatment project, Xinhua news agency quoted Ding Lei, an anti-corruption official, as saying in an overnight report.

In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of rural residents in Henan contracted HIV from commercial blood stations that combined the blood of sellers into common vats, separated the valuable plasma, and then pumped the tainted blood back into unwitting sellers.

Yang was fired in August last year after residents complained of the county's "slow social and economic development", Xinhua said.

There was no evidence to suggest that Yang has embezzled money allocated for AIDS prevention and treatment, Xinhua quoted Ding as saying.

Shangcai, a poor, wheat-growing county with an estimated 1.2 million people, had 6,925 people with HIV/AIDS by the end of July, Xinhua said, with most having contracted it through contaminated blood donations or transfusions before 1995.

Xinhua said the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Henan stood at 35,000 in 2005, quoting provincial health department figures.

China has an estimated 650,000 people with HIV/AIDS, though some experts say the number may be higher and over one million might be infected in Henan alone.