The China Youth Daily reported Monday that some people make a living out of the business of selling cheating devices and hiring "Qiangshou." They put out advertisements on campuses using official-sounding company names, but most of them are not registered in the official system.

A middle-aged man from a "company" called Beijing Hell and Heaven Sci&Tech was quoted as saying, "We hire training school teachers, college professors and foreigners to provide the answers, which are very reliable." The man said it cost them more than 8,000 yuan (about 1,170 U.S. dollars) to hire the "professors or foreigners" for half an hour only.

The exam sitters, on the other hand, had to pay around 3,000 yuan for the answers to one single test such as politics or English. The "company" is said to be giving discounts or wholesale prices if a customer buys answers to two or the whole set of tests.

The hi-tech devices are mostly made by electronics companies in the southern city Shenzhen, the China Youth Daily's close tracks on the devices' brands showed.

Watches that could receive and display texts through wireless transmitters were believed to be made largely by the Shenzhen-based Sunlips (Hong Kong) Internet Technology Co., Ltd. The company's Web site is now out of service.

Shenzhen Wireless Sci&Tech Development Co., Ltd, reportedly another maker of the watches, does not give a detailed company address on its Web site.

To better fight the hi-tech savvy cheaters, Zhou said, "If cheating with wireless apparatus becomes rampant in future exams, we may be forced to disturb the city's whole signal transmission system, which unfortunately would cause trouble for regular users of wireless devices."

The radio bureau and other exam-relevant departments are discussing for further steps, Zhou said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2009)