A man in China has given severe punishment to a thief he claimed he had caught at home: a tiny rat.

The resident from southern China said the rodent had stolen rice from his home and bitten his feet.

In a video posted by the man, surnamed Lv, he is seen tying up the rodent before beating it up with a stick. He reportedly beat the rat to death.

The footage was filmed on November 13 in Wenshan, Yunnan Province, according to Pear Video.

Mr Lv is seen interrogating the rat as the animal was tied up with strings.

The man questioned the rat: 'How much rice have you eaten in my house? You, you are naughty.'

The man then accused the animal of biting him and trying to hit its head with a stick in his hand.

The rat continued struggling during the process and tried to avoid being beaten.

The man then yelled to the rat: 'You are so dirty.'

According to Pear Video, the rat was beaten to death by Mr Lv who then throw his remains in the bin.

A tiny rat was tied up and beaten to death by a man who claimed to have caught it stealing rice. Mr Lv filmed himself punishing the rodent in China and uploaded the footage online

Mr Lv then explained to the camera that he had decided to carry out the punishment because the Chinese had a saying 'a rat crossing the street would be chased by all'.

The video has apparently sparked a debate on Chinese social media.

Some people condemned the 'cruel' man for his behaviour, saying that the rat was life and shouldn't have been tortured like that.

But others argued that if the rodent had done wrong things, then it should be beaten.

Pictures spotted on Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging platform, in January showed the rodent being tied up to what seemed to be a trolley and publicly shamed by workers at a store

Apparently, this is not the first time that rice-stealing rats have been cruelly punished in China.

In January, workers at a Chinese convenient store publicly shamed a rodent after finding it stealing rice.

Pictures on social media show the rodent being tied up to what seemed to be a trolley on the street. A piece of paper was stuck to its body which read: 'I dare not do it again!'