Song Fulai, who composed questions for the certified architect exam, was sentenced in Beijing in 2008 to 18 months in prison for leaking state secrets. The court found that he gave exam questions to his students during tutorials. [Photo/China Dail]

'What is more unjust?'

A different blogger, using the name "2011 judicial exam answers were leaked", complained that people who were taking the judicial exam knew the answers in advance. The blogger posted images of text messages about the answers to exam questions. The messages were time-stamped 10:12 am on Sept 18; the exam was scheduled to begin at noon.

In China, passing the exam is required for people who want to be judicial officers or lawyers. "What is more unjust than the injustice of the law?" one of the posts said. The blogger didn't reply to China Daily's request for an interview.

China has been giving the National Judicial Examination for more than 10 years and the passing rate has risen from 6.7 percent in 2002 to 20 percent last year.

The Ministry of Justice acknowledged that it was aware of the Internet allegations, but since the source is anonymous, it was uncertain whether the leaks were true. The ministry said its examination department will look into the allegations.

In 2008, a senior ministry official was arrested over leaked answers to the 2007 national judicial exam. Lin Jiandong, the director of a supervisory office, was convicted of accepting bribes and leaking state secrets. He was sentenced by the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court in February 2009 to 5 years 6 months in prison.

Architects, too

Exam answers also were leaked online during the certified architect exam last weekend. A dealer posted all 80 single and multiple-choice questions in the first section of the exam with their answers. Eighty percent of them were correct.

Those answers were free, but the dealer said that exam takers could buy all the answers for the remaining three subject areas at 4,000 yuan ($625) for each section. Many students left comments on the dealer's blog, expressing great interest in making the purchase.

The exam administrator, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, has issued no response.

In 2008, Song Fulai was sentenced in Beijing to 18 months in prison for leaking state secrets by giving exam questions to his students during tutorials. Song was a question composer for the certified architect exam.

A lucrative business

Experts say there's an intricate chain of commercial interests behind professional qualification tests, and regulation is scattered among the ministries that oversee the different professions. The experts also say some individuals or companies are using those commercial interests to make illegal profits, in the process damaging the credibility of the exams.

Mao Jianghui, a researcher with Qinghai Provincial Institute of Social Sciences, said more than 50 types of professional qualification tests are administered. The exam business - registration, training, purchasing of preparation materials, certificate authentication and so on - is estimated to involve 300 billion yuan every year.

The exam organizers, training institutes and sellers of examination materials are obvious winners from the prosperous market.

At the Judicial Exam College, a training center affiliated with China University of Politics and Law, the most expensive program lasts about half a year and costs 28,800 yuan. But a student can receive a 20,000 yuan refund if he or she fails the bar exam.

In the cheapest program, exclusively for university students, participants sit in a 200-seat classroom and watch lecture videos. It costs 400 yuan.

About 80 percent of teachers who compose questions for the exam are from the university, giving the college much more authority and advantage than privately run training centers, said Wang Qiang, who works for the college.

"Some of them would come to give lectures," he said, but he rejected any possibility that the college's training programs would leak exam answers. "Of course the lecturers will tell students about the critical knowledge points in previous exams, which are helpful for preparation."

Some other training centers seek to hook students by saying they have successfully "predicted" exam questions in the past. Such centers have been proved in court to be a major source of exam leaks, a highly profitable business. Two examples:

Before the national medical licensing examination in 2009, an officer named Ye with the organizing body leaked four sets of exam papers to a training center.The center promised trainees it would use real questions when giving lectures and it charged each student more than 10,000 yuan.

In 2007, Li Daogui and Yang Shuzhen from Beijing Buyun Cultural Development Co paid 100,000 yuan for questions and answers to the certified architect exam. They sold them to company-owned training centers and made a profit of more than 400,000 yuan.

"There are still many loopholes for possible leaks, from the process of question designing to delivery of the exam papers," said a source close to the organizers of professional qualification tests, who was reluctant to be named. "People will take any risks as long as they can make a profit."

Postscript

Zhu Hua, the woman who was targeted with offers of test questions on the CPA exam, doesn't yet know how she fared. Results are due at the end of November.