Database aims at fast-track career dreams of counterfeit-degree holders

China has a real knack for fakes - from phoney Tommy Hilfiger jackets to sham Lux soap and the latest pirated VCDs.

At any train station enterprising business people are selling phoney receipts - you just fill in the amount.

Faking an education also appears to be as easy as ABC, and there are so many bogus diplomas floating about that the Education Ministry has decided enough is enough.

It expects to set up a national computer database to thwart the growing number of counterfeit documents used by job-seekers.

The database could be up and running as early as September, according to a report in the Shanghai Daily.

Universities in Beijing, Tianjin and Chongqing as well as Liaoning and Hubei provinces have already set up databases, and their information can be accessed through the national system.

By July, the Shanghai Education Commission hopes to have its own database, including information from all the city's 41 institutes of higher learning, the newspaper reported.

'There are some professionals in this business,' said Wang Hong of the Shanghai Education Commission.

'We hope the database will put a stop to this trade.'

Perhaps the counterfeit degree is just one way of dealing with the rising cost of education in China. No need to pay for the frills of getting an education when all you really need is the diploma.

A degree from a good university usually leads to higher paying jobs.

The Shanghai Daily reported that the cost of a fake diploma is as little as 400 yuan (about HK$374), though a counterfeit master's degree would cost 600 yuan. an undergraduate degree from a top university, such as Fudan or Jiaotong, would cost up to 1,800 yuan.

The newspaper quoted an enterprising specialist in the counterfeit trade as offering a unique guarantee.

'If yours is found to be fake we will give you your money back,' said the woman whose card, perhaps concealing another deception, gave her name as Wu Pin.

One of the more absurd cases this correspondent witnessed involved a man who submitted documents to a certain Western embassy in Beijing, hoping to gain a visa to study abroad. The would-be candidate submitted all his diplomas from grammar, middle and high school to university to support his application.

Unfortunately, he used the same photograph on all of the documents through his entire academic career. He would have been one of the few grammar school graduates with tell-tale hair on his upper lip.

'The situation is getting worse and worse,' said Chen Yukun, professor of education at East China Normal University.

'It is getting easier and easier to forge documents. At the same time, people do not have time to properly investigate the job-seekers, so they tend to look more at the diploma than the individual's skills. This provides an opportunity for fraudsters.'

The newspaper quoted police as saying they last year shut down 20 underground printing operations and detained 200 people involved in the trade during the first 10 months.

The diplomas will have a 17-digit registration number stored in the database. Employers can access a diploma by logging on to the site http://202.120.8.177 and keying in the name and diploma data.