China's education authority warned 2.81 million test-takers that people caught cheating on the supplementary national college entrance exams on Saturday will be shown no lenience.

"To ensure a fair, satisfactory exam, education officials at all levels should strengthen surveillance against exam fraud, with a focus on cracking down on group cheating and cheating with modern communication devices," said a notice released by the Ministry of Education.

No lenience would be given to those who were found cheating during the two-day exam, the ministry said.

The supplementary college entrance exam, held every October, is for self-taught adults and students who failed the national college entrance exams held every June.

University degrees have become a must for young people seeking a better life in China's increasingly competitive society.

In recent years, a growing number of students have been found cheating in exams. In this June's national exam, about 3,000 students were caught cheating. Last year the number was 1,300.

Local media on Saturday reported that cheating devises could be bought on Internet.

A search for "cheating tools" on dangdang.com, the country's most popular person-to-person on-line trading website, produced four pages of information on cheating devices, Beijing Youth Daily says.

They included specially-designed pens, wireless earphones, DVDs teaching cheating methods, most of which were priced at less more than ten yuan each, the paper says.

"This will help you overcome all exams, paving a golden path to the entrance of key universities," the paper quotes an on-line advertisement for a cheating DVD as saying.

Source: Xinhua