HONG KONG — A court in northwest China sentenced a former provincial safety official on Thursday to 14 years in prison for graft, a year after he became a symbol of a callous and corrupt bureaucracy when Chinese Internet users circulated photographs suggesting he had been living beyond his means.

The Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court issued the sentence after convicting Yang Dacai, a former safety inspection official in Shaanxi Province, on charges of taking bribes and possessing assets of unclear origin, Chinese state-run news outlets reported Thursday morning. Phone calls to the court in Xi’an seeking confirmation of the sentence went unanswered Thursday.

Mr. Yang’s case is one of many in China in recent years to demonstrate how local officials can be held accountable to public opinion, as ordinary citizens frequently turn to microblog posts and other online social networks to vent complaints against rampant corruption or other abuses of power.

However, such complaints against senior or national-level officials remain taboo and are actively scoured from the Internet by government censors and employees of the companies that operate online forums.