More than 1,000 Chinese officials above the county level have been punished for corruption during the first five months, up 2.4 percent over the same period last year, Monday's Procuratorial Daily said.

Prosecutors across China have investigated a total of 12,622 corruption cases, involving 15,045 people, the newspaper said, quoting sources with the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

More than 64 percent of the cases were "serious cases", the newspaper said, meaning that the cases involved officials taking more than 50,000 yuan (US$6,600) in bribes or embezzling more than 100,000 yuan of public funds.

By April, China had dealt with 21,889 cases of commercial bribery involving 5.3 billion yuan (US$676 million) since it started an anti-corruption campaign in 2005, according to official statistics.

(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2007)