While renting cars or hiring baby-sitters may not be an unusual concept for most people, probably few have considered hiring thieves.

However, a company in east China's Shandong Province is advertising just that. Xinsheng, one of many leasing companies based in Qingdao, has made itself stand out with its unique scheme to "lease thieves" played by its employees for businesses.

"We provide 'thieves' to businesses and have them caught by security guards on the spot to show to real thieves as a warning," said Ms. Yang, head of the company's service department.

"'Thieves' will cooperate with the security guards and be paraded through, for example, a shopping mall after being caught. They will be at the disposal of the security guards."

The 20-something woman of Xinsheng visited a Carrefour supermarket to promote the business early this week when the company just started operation. But security guards there were obviously looking at each other blankly in astonishment after her introduction.

Yet the woman surnamed Yang was confident about the market prospect despite the fact that the company had only two to three "thieves" and all were her relatives.

The company, she said, though it had not registered at the local industrial and commercial bureau, charged 300 yuan (US$36) for a show of one "thief" per hour and 200 (US$24) more for the "public parade".

"Our guard-and-thief show applies to public areas like department stores, supermarkets, libraries and hospitals."

But most enterprises which knew about the news said "no" to it.

"This show cannot be done," said a corporate planning director in one of the city's shopping malls, who refused to be named.

Although the shopping mall suffers losses of over one-million-yuan (US$12 million) from commodities stolen every year, he said, the management was afraid of using such service as they could not face the consequences if such a ruse was disclosed publicly.

"Besides, the parade of the thief is forbidden by law. And who can shoulder the responsibility if the thief is beaten by angry consumers?" he said.

(Xinhau News Agency March 27, 2004)