Police have arrested a man in China on fraud charges after he was caught dating 17 girlfriends at once.

The man from Changsha, Hunan province, who has only been identified by his surname Yuan, was exposed last month when he was rushed to hospital after a traffic accident. His 17 girlfriends, some of whom he'd been with for years, then met when they visited his bedside, South Morning China Post reported citing a Rednet.cn article.

His angered lovers then established an online chat group called the “revenge alliance”, and allegedly quickly discovered that Juan was asking some of his girl friends for money each month.

Yuan is reported to have had a child with one of the women, and had been planning to marry her, BBC News reported.

“I was really worried when I heard that he was in hospital,” Xiao Li, who had been with Mr Yuan for 18 months, told the local Xiaoxiang Chen Bao newspaper earlier this month.

“But when I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn't cry anymore,” she said.