The government of east China's Zhangzhou City has sacked a drunken local official who accused a woman in a hotel of being a prostitute and then physically assaulted her so badly she had to receive medical treatment.

The incident was caught by the hotel's video surveillance cameras. When pictures appeared on the Internet and in Chinese media, thousands of netizens demanded an immediate investigation of the assault and sanctions for the official.

The local discipline inspection commission said in a statement that Yan Jianguo, the former vice director of the Zhangzhou Work Safety Bureau, deserved the punishment and called on officials to draw a lesson from the case.

The scandal occurred on April 27 when Yan quarreled with a woman surnamed Chen, whom he thought was a sex worker, in a hotel.

Seeing Chen go into a room and come out again some time later, Yan asked Chen "how much did you earn just now?". Chen retorted but the drunk official then began to assault her.

Chen said she went to the hotel to give a mobile phone charger to her fiancé who was living there.

Yan was drunk when the assault occurred, which his boss Fang Hanping, director of the Zhangzhou Work Safety Bureau, said was partly the cause of the outrageous behavior.

"He often gets drunk and then does stupid things. I have warned him many times," Fang said.

Before being sacked, Yan spent five days in a police cell and was given a grave warning as a measure of Party discipline.

Yan paid an apologetic visit to Chen when she was being treated for an injury to her right eye at a local hospital. He apologized and told her he was willing to shoulder all the medical expenses.

The local police said Chen suffered "slight injuries" during the assault.

Chen accepted Yan's apology. Both Yan and Chen refused to talk further with the media.

"Yan has tainted the image of the local government," said an official with the Zhangzhou Work Safety Bureau who did not want to be named.

The incident would not have generated the same amount of public concern if Yan had not been a government official, which showed the Chinese public would not accept poor standards of behavior from public officials, said Gan Mantang, a professor from Fuzhou University.

Chinese civil servants are on notice to be on their best behavior -- at home and at work -- or face the sack under a new regulation that comes into effect on Friday.

Officials' private lives and public performance will be closely scrutinized under the country's first regulation to systematically stipulate administrative punishments for disreputable conduct.

Chinese President Hu Jintao at the beginning of this year called on Party cadres to "improve their work style", a Chinese expression meaning that cadres should be upright, modest and prudent, hard-working, frugal, and care more about the people they administer than themselves.