SHANGHAI - It's possible that no other country has as many exams as China. From
school admissions and job recruitment to promotion in the civil service, exams
are an inseparable part of Chinese life. Incomplete statistics show that there
are 200 government-organized nationwide examinations and that nearly 40 million
people take national tests each year. The number would be much bigger if
local-level tests were included on the list.
Incidences of cheating, however, are increasingly rampant. Even the college
entrance exams and civil service exams, the most competitive and strictly
supervised exams in China, are not
without cheaters. This year, organized cheating was found in the college exam
venues of northeast Jilin province, western Guizhou province, northern Shanxi
province and central Hunan province.
The Chinese authorities have tried everything to prevent cheating. They
installed closed-circuit television networks at exam venues, sent police to
patrol exam rooms and made candidates of the national college entrance
examinations sign an honesty declaration. However, as the Chinese say: "Good is
strong, but evil is 10 times stronger", and cheaters continue to develop more
sophisticated techniques.
If catching cheaters at national-level exams is a tough task, catching them at
regional government tests is even more challenging, given that local
governments often lack the resources or resolve to impose strict levels of
supervision.
Exam organizers at a northwestern city, however, have figured out a novel way
to deal with cheats. They hired pupils to help supervise an exam for police
officers. The result - nearly 10% of the exam participants were caught cheating
red-handed.
The government of a district of Wuwei, in northwestern Gansu province, hired 18
pupils to watch over a promotion examination for 265 police officers, judges
and procurators. The pupils were sent to nine exam rooms, where they watched
over the examinees together with adult invigilators.
Those pupils, averaged 12 years old caught 18 cheaters, whilst their adult
coworkers caught only seven. Each student was awarded with stationary worth 50
yuan (US$7.32). The authorities annulled the cheaters' scores but did not issue
any further penalties.
The government hired the pupils because "adult invigilators are often very
careful and cautious" and sometimes "sympathize with the cheaters", according
to Huang Ni, human resources chief of the Liangzhou district of Wuwei city.
Innocent pupils, however, are fearless.
On these grounds and given the "good results", Huang indicated that the
practice of hiring young invigilators would probably continue.
While the Liangzhou district government hailed the successful role of student
invigilators, the incident triggered nationwide discussions on moral bankruptcy
in the adult world.
Internet forums and newspapers are full of criticism against the cheaters -
cops, judges and procurators - as they are professionals who are supposed to
enforce law and justice. The Liangzhou district government is also being
criticized for laying its responsibilities on minors.
Beijing News compares the pupil invigilators to the child in Hans Christian
Andersen's famous fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" who points out the
simple fact that the emperor has no clothes on while adults pour out
compliments. Likewise, cheating in exams among adults is so commonplace that
everybody closes their eyes, except the innocent children.
A commentary of the national Guangming Daily newspaper stated that adults don't
lack the eyes to see problems. They lack the courage to expose them. The
Chengdu Commercial Daily criticized the adults for disrupting social morality
while expecting children to help them restore it.
The Liangzhou government has good reason to distrust the adult invigilators,
however. In a society that values guanxi, or interpersonal
relationships, many are often reluctant to expose the cheaters. They have good
reasons to fear. Zheng Hong, a female invigilator in Songyuan, Jilin province,
was beaten up after expelling a cheater from the college entrance exam venue in
June. Her shoulders were scratched and her legs kicked by the cheater's mother,
who thought her son was "unfairly" treated.
In Liangzhou's case, authorities turned to pupils because the adult
invigilators are public servants who would be reluctant to offend their
colleagues.
To curb the rampant cheating, Chinese lawmakers and scholars are calling for
heavier penalties against the cheaters. In most cases, if they are unlucky
enough to get caught, they simply get their scores canceled or certificates
revoked.
Lawmaker Zhang Zhao'an proposed an examination law at this year's national
congress. In fact, Chinese lawmakers have been mulling an examination law since
2002 and even completed a draft in 2005, but so far the law is yet to come out.
But many people doubt whether a new law would deter the cheaters.. It is not
uncommon in China that even where legislation is strong, the means of
enforcement are helplessly weak.
Exam cheating has deeper roots in the moral decay of today's Chinese society.
The Chinese, long proud of the Confucius virtues of honesty, courtesy and
loyalty, have been experiencing a moral and ethical void ever since those
values were broken by the Cultural Revolution and replaced by a feverish
pursuit of money and power. The order of the market economy, however, is yet to
be fully established. Thus cheating becomes widespread - not only in the exam
venues, but also in the academic field and in the government itself. Cheating
has become so widespread that the cheaters no longer feel shameful.
Recently, quite a few university presidents have been accused of plagiarism.
But few of them were penalized or apologized. Huang Qing, the vice head of
Southwest Jiaotong University, was arguably the most severely punished scholar
- the university in July revoked his PhD after he was found to have plagiarized
certain bits of his doctorate dissertation, which was passed nine years ago. In
defense, Huang said "only 7%" of his dissertation was copied and that his
opponents were trying to bring him down by making a fuss over a small issue.
More recently, Zhou Zude, president of the Wuhan University of Technology, was
accused of plagiarizing an article of which he is the first author and his
student Xie Ming the second. The university cleared Zhou of any wrongdoing, and
said Xie wrote the article and Zhou had no idea his name was on it. As for Xie,
he was not allowed to obtain his PhD that year.
Rampant plagiarism in the academic field has prompted the authorities to use
software to detect it. Nearly 400 colleges are using the software, developed by
the elite Tsinghua University, to check the theses of their students. But the
students have been quick to find counter-measures. Taobao.com, the Chinese
version of eBay, provides anti-detection services for plagiarizers. A
salesperson on Taobao claimed an article which was half plagiarized passed the
software's detectors with his help.
Some Chinese now joke that pupils, who are yet to be polluted by the adult
world, should not only serve as invigilators, but also as anti-graft personnel.
However, Ge Jianxiong, an outspoken professor at Fudan University, pointed out
that the pupil invigilators would soon collaborate. "The cheaters [in Liangzhou
District] were caught by surprise this time ... If there is a second time, the
cheaters will use their influence over the pupils' parents and teachers to
force the pupils to collaborate."
Without institutional supervision, it is very likely that every effective
invigilating approach will lead to another "innovative" way to cheat.
China needs the media, courts and anti-graft organizations that are independent
from the tightly-knit circles of interest groups to act if they are to fully
expose the follies of cheating.
Otherwise, when everyone is somewhere along the chain of corruption, it is a
mission impossible to improve the moral standard of the whole country.
Stephen Wong is a freelance journalist based in Shanghai.
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