Others Fang said he has exposed include Xu Zongheng, the former mayor of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, with a degree from a diploma mill called International East West University; Chen Qiyuan, the CEO of Bawang International Group with a degree from California American University and Wu Zheng, the founder of Sun Media Group with a diploma from Barrington University.

"Many diploma mills have wonderful sounding names, making people, especially Chinese, think they are world-famous universities. Many Chinese even prestigious ones would like to buy diplomas from these universities to show off. In fact, they don't know that they are virtually unqualified universities," Fang said.

Experts' views

Wang Hongcai, an expert with the Institute of Education at Xiamen University, told the Global Times that the purchased degrees reflect the Chinese obsession with education and prestige.

"In foreign countries, diploma mills will not fool anyone, because unless it's for a specialized position, diplomas are not so important. But in China, people paid attention to diplomas and usually blindly worship the overseas diplomas, so, it's not strange for people to buy diplomas," Wang told the Global Times.

Zheng Ruoling, another education expert with Xiamen University, told the Global Times that echoed Wang's comments and added it was irresponsible for famous people, especially educators such as Zhang Jianhua, to purchase such degrees.

"If the educator makes up a fake educational background for himself, he is not qualified to teach others," Zheng told the Global Times

She said that she hopes the mass media pays much more attention to this phenomenon and puts pressure on famous people.

"The society as a whole increase its supervisory strength to prevent more people from getting degrees from diploma mills," she said.