A teacher who allegedly helped a relative get into university by stealing the identity of one of his students has been expelled from the Party and demoted, an official said.

Liu Ming, 46, a high school teacher in Shanxian county, Shandong province has admitted that he held back a university acceptance letter addressed to student Zhou Zhijing in 1999.

Liu then passed the letter on to his cousin Liu Yanli, who as a result was enrolled in Shandong Zibo University of Medicine, a Party discipline official surnamed Guo told Beijing News yesterday.

An investigation led by a county official and a Party discipline official has been launched into the circumstances surrounding the identity theft, which went undetected for almost 10 years.

Zhou said she has been left distraught by the crime and that she believed she had not made it into university.

She spent another year at high school preparing for the university entrance examination and was admitted to Tianjin Polytechnic University in 2000.

According to Beijing Evening News, Zhou only learned about the crime when a bank denied her loan application last November.

The bank said that her credit balance showed she already had a mortgage and owed 148,000 yuan ($21,612), the report said.

Further checks reportedly revealed that she was already registered at the bank with the same name and ID number, but with a different education background, phone number and address.

"This is just absurd. I wasted a year re-preparing for the exam," Zhou told the report.

Liu Yanli, who moved to Jilin City with her husband in 2005, said that when growing up her parents "had gone to great effort" to help her change her identity.

Liu Ming is under police supervision, but the Public Security Bureau gave no further details. The investigation is likely to determine if anyone will be charged.

It follows a similar case of Luo Caixia, who had her identity stolen by a classmate in Hunan province in 2004.

Wang Zhengrong, a local senior police officer, admitted paying 50,000 yuan to secure the theft.

Professor Mao Shoulong, director of Institutional Analysis and Public Policy in Renmin University of China, said these cases were isolated incidents, and that the use of identity theft for admission to university was "not a trend and does not have the potential to develop into being so."