Almost 20,000 Chinese officials have been punished for breaches of the eight bureaucracy rules announced late last year, China's discipline watchdog said on Monday.

Some 4,675 officials at different levels were found to have been involved in 17,380 cases, and had received punishments by administrative or Party discipline agencies during the campaign by the end of October, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The "eight-point" bureaucracy and formalism rules were introduced at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 4 in 2012. They asked CPC officials to reduce pomp, ceremony, bureaucratic visits and meetings.

Since the election of the new leadership, the CPC has launched a series of campaigns to stamp out bureaucracy, formalism and lavish spending of public funds.