A total of 32,000 people withdrew from the Communist Party of China (CPC) last year and most of them were dismissed from the Party to ensure the purity of the CPC, a senior CPC official said Friday.

The CPC had 80.269 million members by the end of 2010, Wang Qinfeng, deputy head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, said at a press conference.

According to an official of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection,?disciplinary punishments were given to 146,517 people and 5,373 people were transferred to judicial agencies for criminal proceedings last year.