BEIJING - A total of 4,843 Chinese officials above the county head level were punished for discipline violations in 2011, a disciplinary official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said Friday.

Cases involving 777 of these officials have been transferred to judicial departments, said Cui Shaopeng, a senior official of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Party's top disciplinary watchdog.

Major violation cases involving former senior officials, such as Zhang Jiameng, former vice chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, Song Chenguang, former vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and Liu Zhuozhi, former vice chairman of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, have been transferred to judicial departments for further investigation and punishment, he said.

Moreover, cases involving former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun as well as Tian Xueren, former vice governor of northeast China's Jilin province, and Huang Sheng, former vice governor of the eastern Shandong province, are currently still under investigation.

According to Cui, in 2011, the country's supervision authorities and CPC disciplinary authorities across the country had investigated 137,859 cases of discipline violations and concluded probes into 136,679 such cases, which led to the penalization of 142,893 people.