The rampant fraud in China’s educational system has led people to worry that it will undermine China’s progress in science and the economy. What has gone wrong, turning a people that values honesty and moral learning into a nation compromised by fraudulence?
“The problem is caused by the system” was the explanation for a case of chain plagiarism (see Part 2 of this series), and this comment has been widely echoed. What kind of “system” has been turning students into cheaters and professors into frauds?
Learning Replaced with Test Scores
China’s education has been test-focused. The national entrance exam is probably the most important test for students, as it will likely determine their fates for the rest of their lives. Not only have they been preparing for it in 12 years of schooling, their parents’ and grandparents’ hopes have all been placed on their good performance on this one exam.
For schools, the national entrance rate to university is the measure by which the educational bureau uses to evaluate their performance. According to an article by Zhang Fang published in “Education and Management,” teachers who meet a certain quota of their students passing the exam will get rewarded. Any means, even illicit, to increase the entrance rate are endorsed by schools.
“The entire education revolves around the entrance exam, and students and their parents put their entire bet on the exam. This deviates from the goal of education, as well as bringing a lot of pressure onto the society,” stated a web forum quoted by the Epoch Times.
This pressure, when channeled by a society permeated with corruption in the government, fraudulence in business, and fake consumer products, leads easily to cheating. In cases of exam cheating as described in Part 1 of this series, students and their parents often collaborate.
Once in college, the emphasis on test scores continues. Cheating worsens on exams that are either for high-stakes or on courses with little consideration for learning. The English qualification exam, for example, is a high-stakes exam as it is mandatory for all college students. Not only that, potential employers may also require certain English scores. The English qualification exam is so commonly cheated on that it is losing its purpose.
Another commonly cheated on exam is Politics, which combines Marxist theory and current affairs. A study at Harbin Polytech shows that 70 percent of the students surveyed cheat on Politics exams.
Nowhere else is Chinese education’s emphasis on conformity better demonstrated than in the Politics course. Students are not required to think critically—in fact critical thinking is dangerous. One only needs to memorize the standard answers to questions such as the meaning of socialist democracy and law, or the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—the answers themselves are myths or lies. If lies can earn students scores, why wouldn’t students cheat for the same?
Some link the focus on tests with the traditional Confucian examination system of rote learning, neglecting the fact that moral learning is the foundation of Chinese traditional education. Children learned from a young age to apply the “Three Character Classic” and “The Rules for Students” in their daily lives in order to nurture the Confucian virtues of honesty, filial piety, benevolence, etc.
Education in present-day China has lost its moral bearing. Some scholars propose that socialist ethics would help cure the problem of cheating, forgetting that it is the socialism itself, as established by the Communist Party, that has eroded the trust and honesty of the Chinese people due to their experience of its many political movements.
As a college diploma often does not lead to a job, students became less interested in learning. One professor wrote on a blog on china.com that she has assisted in producing many “empty-bellied fake college students,” describing how students cut classes all too often and relied on cheating to pass exams. Responsible teachers are blamed, instead of respected.
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‘Scientific GDP’
Much that characterizes China’s higher education is about numbers: increasing the number of students, increasing the number of publications required for faculty promotion—the latter is referred to as the “scientific GDP,” after China’s singular emphasis on GDP in economic development.
A major change took place in the 1990s when the central government required universities to run as businesses, also called the industrialization of the universities. Universities needed to make money, to put it bluntly. This partly was due to low state investment in education. In 1994, education investment accounted for only 2.5 percent of GDP in China, while the world average was 3.6 percent.
One way to make money was through increased tuition and fees from students and one way to increase the amount collected was to increase the number of students.
In 1999, the admission rate leaped to 56 percent from 1998’s 34 percent, and has remained high since then. This year, the admission rate reached 69 percent, a record high.
While the number of students has increased, the quality of higher education has declined. For example, from 1999 to 2004, the number of students more than tripled, but the number of colleges increased by only 61 percent, and the number of professors only doubled.
While pressured to teach more, professors themselves are caught in the frenzy of producing higher numbers of publications required for promotion. “Publish or perish” is taken to an extreme—it is the number of publications, not their quality, that matter.
Since the 1990s, universities have implemented a “contract system” for faculty. According to Southern People Weekly, some universities renew faculty contracts once every three years. If the professor did not produce the required number of publications, he or she will be demoted. This has only encouraged short-term behavior, including plagiarism.
News Weekly listed 10 problems related to the number-focused promotion requirements, including academic corruption, garbage articles, fake titles, and fraudulent publications.
Figures from the Chinese Institute of Science and Technology Information show that Chinese academic publication has been increasing steadily. In 2006, China produced over 172,000 articles in major international journals, ranking second in the world, after the United States. But quality is a different matter.
The academic bubble is enlarging. Academic journals “seek out popular scholars, like courting movie stars, and solicit their articles with high fees in order to show quality; but scholars who are not well-known have to pay money to publish, like paying an advertising fee,” commented a professor to Southern People Weekly.
“Professors are like routine operators on a production line…under heavy pressure, they have gradually forgotten their natural responsibility of creating knowledge and thoughts,” said the professor, who remains anonymous.
Cai Dafeng, Vice President of Fudan University, commented to Global Net that China has contributed little to knowledge production in recent years, and that “seeking instant success and quick profits is the enemy of scientific studies.
Greed, Morality, and the Party Line
Since Deng Xiaoping’s time, getting rich has been glorious in China. Academic fraud has become a means of getting rich for some. According to Yangtze Daily, business involving academic fraud accounted for 180-540 million yuan (US$27-81 million) in 2007.
Greed is not the only impetus for fraud. A lack of honesty and trust has increasingly plagued Chinese society, of which academic fraud is only a small part, according to Southern People Weekly.
The Weekly quoted Tang Jun, former president of Microsoft-China, who was questioned for having a fake diploma: “It is no problem cheating one person, but if you cheated everyone, it is an ability, a sign of success.”
The historian Sun Longji, commenting to the Weekly on the moral decline reflected in cheating, said that today’s Chinese people lack any transcendent awareness beyond the mundane world and lack ultimate caring. With this materialistic perspective, survival is the first consideration, and the basis of morality has been broken.
This is astounding in a country that claims the long moral and spiritual tradition of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It is also not surprising given the CCP’s hostility to religion, which, since 1949, it has sought to uproot in Chinese society.
Dishonesty and lack of intellectual integrity have been cited by many as reasons for the rampant fraud. A study from Harbin Polytech shows that 75 percent of students surveyed believe cheating is not a big deal or is understandable—only 25 percent thought it is wrong. When students were caught cheating, they thought it was unfair or that they were unlucky, and fellow students helped by negotiating with professors not to issue any punishment.
In a similar study conducted at Xi’an Music Institute, only 10 percent of students thought cheating despicable. Many (30 percent) saw others around them succeed in cheating, and believed they had something to lose if they did not cheat.
Finding exemplars of cheating is not difficult in China. Jian Yan wrote in Encyclopedic Knowledge this year that the largest group of cheaters is not in academics, but among state officials who cheat their way to power. They make up fake degrees and diplomas and report fake statistics.
“Fraud is a zero cost business but can bring ten thousand more profits,” wrote Jian Yan, and, as he pointed out, cheaters are rarely punished.
Top Event magazine reported ongoing fraud in government economic statistics. In 2009, the summation of GDP figures from all provinces surpassed the national estimate by 1.4 trillion yuan (US$210 billion). The over-reporting is related to the central government’s use of GDP as a measure of political performance.
Looked at more broadly, this over-reporting is simply a manifestation of the dishonesty that has characterized the CCP from the beginning.
In successive political campaigns, the Chinese people were asked to believe those they knew well— family, friends, neighbors, teachers, fellow workers or colleagues—were enemies. The great famine of 1960-62, in which millions died while the state’s granaries were full, was said to be due to natural disasters. In the Tiananmen Square massacre, no massacre was said to have taken place. When Falun Gong was targeted, the practice of meditative exercises was demonized.
Over the past six decades, the Party’s habit of lying has changed little. As Chinese history has been twisted, the Chinese people have also learned to lie or to be indifferent to what is true.
Cheating is predetermined in the Communist Party-controlled Chinese society. The question is not if there will be cheaters, but who will cheat—in that decision one finds freedom of personal choice in China’s educational system.
But why should anyone be blamed for fraudulence if they are only following the Party line?
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