Match-fixing and bribery are endemic in Chinese football, primarily because of low player salaries and unchecked local government officials, according to the deputy editor-in-chief of a popular Chinese sports newspaper and a former professional footballer.

Their insights into corruption at the top levels of the game in China cast further light on the problems facing football, after the Chinese Football Association (CFA) fined 12 club teams up to £103,000 and punished 58 current and former football officials, players and referees for match-fixing and bribery.

Chinese footballers were prone to accepting bribes because their salaries were often painfully low and delayed for months, said the ex-footballer, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from former coaches and teammates.

Before he retired, in 2009, the player said, he would often receive a phone call from an unknown number the night before a match. The caller, usually from a gambling syndicate, would offer him thousands of pounds to let the other team win. The player never accepted their offers, he told the Guardian.

"Most of the time, it was the defenders who got this kind of offer, because they could allow the other team to score," he said. Goalkeepers, he added, were especially popular targets. "Sometimes the whole team would get involved in match-fixing, but only in rare cases," he said. "Most of the time, you only need five players or fewer to accomplish the goal."

The footballer said conditions for players had improved dramatically over the past three years. Yet before he retired, less important players on his team made approximately £200 a month – barely enough to support their families – and their wages rarely arrived on time. Before important games, they were sometimes offered up to £5,000 to swing the match. Before the anti-corruption drive, 30% of Chinese football matches were rigged, he said.

Despite higher player salaries, football corruption remained a problem because unchecked local government officials often manipulated matches to manage their political relationships, said Ma Dexing, the deputy editor-in-chief of the popular Chinese sports magazine Titan Weekly. "It has nothing to do with money," he said: "it's just because of face."

The association had banned 25 former and current football officials, referees and players from the sport for five years and 33 for life, state media reported on Tuesday. The club team Shanghai Shenhua, which once signed the former Chelsea stars Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka, was fined £103,000 for fixing a match in 2003. It was stripped of that year's league title and penalised with a six-point deduction for next season, which begins in March.

Ma said: "The Chinese Football Association (CFA), they will punish athletes or punish teams or punish referees, but they haven't punished any local government officials. In reality, it's local government officials who are conducting things from behind the scenes."

Ma added that local officials often had enormous power over football teams within their jurisdictions. "They can ask the team's boss to kick a player off the team if the player doesn't listen to him," he said.

This week's punishments mark the end of an extensive anti-corruption campaign that kicked off in 2009 under the 58-year-old association president, Wei Di. He put up a hard fight against match-fixing but recently resigned "over poor results", according to state media. China has not fielded a team at the World Cup since 2002. Its national team failed to reach the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after it ranked below Iraq and Jordan in qualifying rounds.

Among those banned for life are the former Fifa World Cup referee Lu Jun, four former national team players, and the former CFA leaders Nan Yong and Xie Yalong, who were both sentenced to over a decade in jail last year for accepting bribes. According to state media, Nan once said players could purchase a spot on the national team for about £10,000.

Official efforts to clean up Chinese football may be gaining some traction. The New York-based firm IMG Worldwide Inc will soon assume management of China's most prestigious professional league, and foreign star players have become an increasingly common sight on football fields across the country.

Despite the league's notorious corruption problems and low standards of play, China's stadiums are often packed with fans clad in team merchandise and hurling obscenities. The senior Communist party leader Xi Jinping has said he is a fan of the sport.

Yet some experts are sceptical that the CFA's anti-corruption measures are strong enough to have an effect. "These are not really serious punishments," Yan Qiang, vice-president of the sports publisher Titan Media, told the French news agency AFP. "The professional football league is getting more popular and attracting more public attention. But where there is profit, there will be more people trying to get into it with illegal ways, so it will be a continuing fight."