29,000 officials punished in CPC's 2015 frugality campaign

BEIJING - The Communist Party of China (CPC)'s top anti-graft body on Monday said some 29,000 officials were reprimanded for violating austerity rules in the first 11 months of 2015, bringing the total number of those punished since late 2012 to more than 130,000.

Those punished from January to November last year were involved in over 32,000 cases, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a report posted on its website.

The figures represent a significant drop from the year before, when more than 71,000 officials were reprimanded in more than 53,000 cases, signaling that the "eight-point rules" introduced on Dec. 4, 2012 aimed at reducing bureaucracy, extravagance, and undesirable work habits may be having an effect.

But the CPC anti-graft body said violations were still far from being completely rooted out.

According to the CCDI, although the number of officials punished in general had dropped, the number of senior Party officials found with violations had increased.

Eight provincial-level Party officials were punished in 2015 in addition to 441 city-level and 3,800 county-level officials. Overall, the number of officials above the county level punished last year saw a rise of more than 50 percent from the previous year.

Meanwhile, the anti-graft body also warned of "invisible" and "underground" violations among Party officials.

Graft busters found a number of cases where officials continued to dine extravagantly using public funds but at office cafeterias, or accept bribes via digital transfers, the CCDI said in the report.

It urged disciplinary organs to look "with magnifiers," use new media and new technology and rely on public supervision to net more violators.