A man from Northeast China's Jilin Province was reported by local residents to the police five times in three days due to his highly similar looks and expressions to a foreign criminal. Photo: screenshot of video posted on Sina Weibo.

A man from Baicheng in Northeast China's Jilin Province was reported by local residents to the police five times in three days due to his highly similar looks and expressions to a foreign criminal. 

The criminal escaped from prison on October 18 and forced local police to offer a 700,000 yuan ($109,589) reward, initially 150,00 yuan, for information of his whereabouts.

The video widely circulated on social media shows the man in a dark blue down jacket has almost exactly the same facial features, expressions and even hairstyle with the prisoner, who is identified as Zhu Xianjian in Chinese language, from a neighboring country to China. 

Local residents were on the lookout for anyone who looked like Zhu before he was eventually caught on Sunday. In the district where Zhu was caught, the average monthly income of the locals is only 2,000 yuan, according to media reports. 

When Zhu was still on the run, netizens on China's Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo expressed sympathy for the man's suffering and advised that he should wear his ID card around his neck. After Zhu's capture, netizens congratulated the poor "doppelganger" that he wouldn't have to worry about being reported anymore.

Global Times