As China continues its campaign against corruption, 390,000 people were punished for discipline violations and other misconduct in the first nine months of this year, including 18 officials at the provincial or ministerial level, said the country's top disciplinary and supervisory authorities.

The number of people punished this year increased slightly from the 383,000 people disciplined during the same period last year, according to data released on Saturday by the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission, the country's top anti-graft watchdogs.

Discipline inspection and supervision organs continue to promote the building of an anti-graft system to further consolidate and develop the country's overwhelming victory in its fight against corruption, the watchdogs said.

Among the people punished in the first nine months of this year were 256,000 people from the grassroots level, mainly from villages and enterprises.

"It shows that discipline inspection and supervision organs have responded in a timely manner to the concerns of the people and have rectified problems that the people have strongly complained about," the watchdogs said in a statement on their website.

"Corruption at people's doorsteps will seriously undermine their sense of gain and happiness, and needs to be tackled with greater efforts. More measures should be carried out to combat corruption and problems with the work style of officials in the field of poverty alleviation."

Disciplinary inspection commissions and supervision agencies nationwide received more than 2.37 million reports and letters complaining of discipline violations between January and September, according to the release.

The watchdogs said that the country also saw more voluntary confessions made by corrupt officials to discipline agencies this year due to high anti-corruption pressure.

According to the statement about corrupt officials on their website, several officials turned themselves in for suspected discipline violations this month, including Wang Like, secretary of the CPC's Jiangsu provincial committee for political and legal affairs, who is under investigation.

As of Oct 9, about 270 officials had confessed to discipline agencies in Yunnan province, and 148 officials in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region surrendered voluntarily by the end of August, data from local discipline agencies showed.

The fight against corruption is still complex, and the principle of "strictness" will be maintained for a long time to push forward full and strict governance over the Party, the watchdogs said.