At least 515 officials were referred for prosecution or punished for corruption last year in Hainan Province, according to local authorities.

Discipline inspection authorities of Hainan, China's southernmost island province, finished investigations of 348 corruption cases in 2010, transferring 36 officials to judicial organs and giving disciplinary or administrative punishments to 479 others.

Among those punished were 33 officials of Hainan's salt business administration, who spent 629,800 yuan (nearly 95,730 U.S. dollars) in public funds on a 2-week tour of 10 European countries in 2008.

All the officials had been made to pay back the money.

In another case, Tan Dengyao, former mayor of Dongfang City, was sentenced to 18 years in prison early this year for taking money and materials worth 829,650 U.S. dollars.

Tan, 46, was found to have helped people who gave him bribes to get promotion and seek benefits from illegally using land.

As part of China's anti-corruption efforts in tightening supervision of public expenses and the behavior of officials, nationwide 5,098 officials at the county head level or above were punished and 804 officials were referred for prosecution in 2010, according to statistics from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.