Hong Kong (CNN) -- China's ruling Communist Party has expelled two former top officials from a southern Chinese village where local residents rose up last year to protest corruption and abuses of land rights. Xue Chang, the former party chief of Wukan, and Chen Shunyi, the former head of the village committee, are facing charges of corruption and election-rigging, the state-run news agency Xinhua said in a report late Monday. Other local officials were also punished, it said. The provincial authorities have also demanded that Xue and Chen return "illegal gains" worth tens of thousands of dollars, Xinhua reported, citing Zeng Qingrong, deputy head of the supervision department of Guangdong Province.
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Villagers say the punishments are too lenient and the authorites should do more
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The provincial government is investigating former officials in Wukan over corruption
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Local residents drove out village officials during protests last year
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Several ex-officials have been "punished" by the the authorities
After three months, the investigators found that former officials were "involved in illegal transfers of land use rights, embezzling collective properties, accepting bribes and rigging village elections," according to Zeng, the @placeholder official.