Chinese students with poor academic records are using fake foreign passports that identify them as international students to enroll in prestigious Chinese universities.

The Xinhua News Agency website published an article identifying intermediary agencies for the scam. After last years' college entrance exam the agencies placed advertisements promising to help candidates obtain places at top universities after their parents paid 200,000 yuan (US$25,405) for a counterfeit foreign passport.

Overseas students don't have to meet stringent academic requirements to enroll at Chinese universities. All they have to do is present a record of their high school results and pass a basic Chinese language test.

The article says the agencies that help international students enroll in these universities are taking advantage of this loophole to help Chinese access universities that would not otherwise be open to them.

As part of the service the agencies also arrange month-long courses that teach the Chinese how to successfully pose as overseas students. The courses teach them how to speak, dress and act like a foreigner. The agencies also coach students on how to answer the questions that may arise during customs inspections. For example students posing as Filipinos are taught to say they were raised in Chinatown if asked why their English is poor.

The report claims many fake overseas students were recently exposed in Beijing and Shanghai as well as the Guangdong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces.

Han Yongbin is the police officer in charge of entry and exit procedures in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. He told Xinhua News Agency that these "overseas students" ask school authorities to issue graduation certificates in their own names as soon as they graduate. This makes it easy for them to find a job in China.

Now the scam has been uncovered, many unlawful students have been stopped. Universities have suspended a number of those who enrolled with counterfeit passports. Two suspects working for agencies involved in the scam have also been sentenced.

Some experts have suggested that police and border inspection authorities need to strengthen their fight against counterfeit passports. They also suggest universities need to introduce stricter procedures for administering overseas students' graduation certificates.

(CRI November 21, 2006)