A Chinese court sentenced a former chairman of liquor manufacturing giant Kweichow Moutai to life in prison for accepting $17.5 million in bribes. Yuan Renguo, who served on the board of Kweichow Moutai, was convicted on Thursday of taking bribes between 1994 and 2018, according to a statement from a court in the southwestern Chinese Province of Guizhou, where Moutai is based. Shanghai-listed Moutai is one of China’s largest companies by market capitalization. Its high-end versions of baijiu, a type of hard liquor in China, have become status symbols and the drink of choice for the Chinese elite. According to the court record, Yuan accepted cash and properties to assist distributors in securing work with the distiller and increasing allocations of its liquor bottles. Yuan, who was arrested in 2019, stepped down from Moutai in 2018 after 18 years of servicing the company. His arrest prompted authorities to conduct a …