The wife of an Australian businessman jailed in China for 13 years revealed Wednesday she has cancer and fears she will die before he is released.

Niki Chow said she was shocked at the severity of the sentence handed to her husband Matthew Ng on Tuesday after he was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges.

Ng, who was working for travel services group Et-China in the southern city of Guangzhou at the time of his arrest in November 2010, plans to appeal.

Chow must now bring up her three young children and a fourth from Ng's previous marriage on her own, and said she did not know how she would cope.

"I do not have income and I do not have a job. And I have cancer so... for 13 years maybe I'm not alive to see him out, you know? You understand what I mean?" she said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Chow said she had breast cancer and was not confident of an appeal being successful.

"With the severe sentence being delivered I don't think there would be a good chance to reduce it," she said.

Asked if she had any faith in the Chinese justice system, she replied: "It is very unfair."

Chinese media have said the case relates to Ng's role in Et-China's battle with a government-owned travel company for control of domestic travel agency GZL, one of the largest in southern China.

His case has been discussed by Australian and Chinese leaders, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard raising the subject during a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing in April.

Chow said neither she nor her husband had known a verdict would be handed down on Tuesday.

"We didn't get any notice that a verdict would be delivered. We only get notice that there would be presentation of new evidence and that's all," she said.

"After the presentation of new evidence the judge asked us to have a break for 15 minutes. And after that she returned and she read out the verdict."

She said she was "totally shocked".

"He (her husband) was shocked as well. He kept looking at me and the lawyer. How come the judge could say these kind of things?"

Ng's arrest last year came just months after four employees of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, including Australian passport-holder Stern Hu, were jailed in China on bribery and trade secrets charges.

Hu's trial strained relations between Beijing and Canberra, and stoked concerns among foreign investors about the rule of law in China, Australia's top trading partner and a keen consumer of its minerals.

China arrests 600 in huge child trafficking bust
Beijing (AFP) Dec 7, 2011 - Chinese police have busted two huge child trafficking rings that spanned 10 provinces, arresting more than 600 suspects and rescuing 178 children, the government said Wednesday.

Child abductions and trafficking are rife in China, despite repeated police crackdowns -- a problem that many experts blame on the nation's strict "one-child" policy and lax regulations on adoption.

The public security ministry said in a statement that police in the southwestern province of Sichuan had chanced on clues that a child trafficking gang was operating there when dealing with a traffic accident in May.

Then in August, police in the southeastern province of Fujian discovered the existence of another gang involved in widespread child trafficking.

After a long period of evidence-gathering, more than 5,000 police officers from 10 different provinces across China launched a joint offensive on November 30, arresting 608 suspects.

They rescued 178 children, who have now been placed in welfare agencies, in what the statement called "the biggest victory yet for anti-trafficking" operations.

It did not say how old the children were, or whether they had been reunited with their parents.

Lax adoption rules for childless couples in China have led to a thriving underground market for kidnapping, buying and selling children.

Many academics also blame the problem on the nation's strict "one-child" policy, which has put a premium on baby boys, as many families want a male heir.

As such, some parents who are unable to have a son or want a second child opt to buy one, and baby girls are also sometimes sold on to traffickers.

Authorities have repeatedly launched crackdowns on trafficking, but scandals keep emerging.

Police said in July they had freed 89 children in a crackdown on trafficking launched this year, arresting 369 people in the operation.

In November, police in the eastern province of Shandong also broke up a human trafficking gang that bought babies from poor families and sold them on for as much as $8,000.

And in 2007, in a scandal that shocked the nation, authorities found that thousands of people had been forced into slave labour in brickyards and mines across the nation.