March is a busy season for college students—final papers are due, graduate program applications have to be filed, and seniors go job hunting. But many Chinese students don’t sweat the academic side of things.
Among Chinese students, the demand for “dai xie” (literally “write for you” in Chinese)—ghost paper writers—is so great that it has spawned a whole new market both at home and abroad.
The “dai xie” market is not just popular in mainland China. Facing enormous pressure from family members to excel in their studies, and struggling to cope with a foreign language, Chinese students studying abroad are reportedly getting their papers, essays, and theses ghost-written.
Do a quick search for English “dai xie” agencies, and hundreds of results show up. For instance, there’s essayshifu.com, a top-ranked website that offers to write papers for high school to doctoral students in Canada and the United States. Fees range from $29 to $57.80 per 250 words, depending on the student’s education level, as well as how and how quickly (8 to 24 hours) the paper should be done.
