NANNING -- A court in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Monday confirmed and upheld the child trafficking conviction and death sentence of a man claiming to be Vietnamese.

The region's higher people's court announced that it agreed that Huang Qingheng was guilty of orchestrating the exchange of more than 20 infants and children for financial gain since 2010 .

The children were either smuggled from Vietnam to be sold in China, mainly in Guangdong province, or pregnant Vietnamese women were sent to China to sell their unborn children.

Eleven of the children have been rescued by Chinese police.

The other 23 members of Huang's gang, who are both Chinese and Vietnamese nationals, were given jail terms ranging from 22 months to life imprisonment.

The local police said that Huang's nationality is yet to be verified.