Fraud in China

I’ve pretty much have known for a while that China commits a lot of fraud (i.e. bootleg dvds, fake Apple products, Samsang (vs Samsung) and tons more) but I have never really truly realized how far deep the fraud culture runs in China. After reading a white paper written by a Yale and Harvard Business School grad titled “Busted: The top 5 ways that Chinese students cheat on their undergraduate applications to American School” I am truly appalled and disgusted. Below I am going to summarize the key points from the white paper for you so you can join me in being appalled and I apologize for adding my own little snippets, which I can already foresee as not being so nice and understanding.

First and foremost, I want to state that the author of the white paper, Tom Melcher, adds his own disclaimer in his writings to state that although he understands why the Chinese cheat, but he doesn’t by any means think that the ends justify the means. So as far as I am concerned, he is on my side!

The paper starts off by listing some shocking statistics: 90% of recommendation letters are written by someone other than the teacher who just signs and mails it in as if they wrote it, 70% of the applicants’ essays are written by someone else, 50% of high school transcripts are falsified, 30% of financial aid applications contain false information, 10% of achievements and awards are fake!!! These numbers are simply outrageous! What is a college application? Well it’s a compilation of your high school grades and achievements along with essays that you spent months writing and are highly thought out and written recommendations by some of your closest teachers. Throw in an SAT or ACT score and you’re good to go. So I just named off 5 things that are part of a complete application and now I am being told that the Chinese falsify 4 of the 5 parts (maybe even all 5 if they have someone take the SAT for them) and their only rebuttal as to why they do it is: Everybody cheats! *Face palm*

So ok, why is it that they cheat? Well, first they face extreme pressure from the parents. If you think helicopter parents in America are bad, Chinese parents are twice as bad. These parents were around for China’s Cultural Revolution and have grown up being told to focus on getting rich. Furthermore, they have seen millions of people get rich by “bending or breaking the rules, almost always with impunity” and therefore in the parent’s mind “honesty and fairness are naïve dreams”. In other words, the PARENTS think (and teach their kids) that cheating, or bending the rules as they call it, is totally ok! Where is the logic in that! Moral compass….. down the toilet.

The second reason why they cheat is due to agents. Since the college application process is complex, as we all know, the Chinese parents hire agents to help them and their kid navigate this maze that is college applications. These agents get paid around $6,000-$10,000 for a full year of service that usually includes test prep amongst other things. These agents also get a bonus of up to $10,000 if the child gets into a Top 30 or Top 10 University (Chinese care way too much about brand names in my opinion). As this is a lot of money to a Chinese person when the majority of Chinese live for under $2 a day, the agents will do anything in their power to make sure the kids get into great universities, no matter the means. This is when the Chinese actually get creative (first I’ve ever seen). The agents go as far as PhotoShop-ing the transcripts to look better, or to make up awards that the student won, writing essays and filling out all applications. At times, the student doesn’t even have access to any communication with the universities they are applying to because the agent set up an email account on behalf of the student and checks it every day and responds on the students’ behalf as needed. Usually, the agents do all these manipulations without pressure from the parents, but per the article, every parent they interviewed mentioned that they spent countless hours reviewing the agents work so it’s reasonable to assume that the parents are aware of all the agent’s “adjustments”. Once again, point for parents and their morality here (heavy on the sarcasm).

Lastly, the high school themselves add to cheating dilemma. Some schools are too helpful, meaning they have no problem tweaking a transcript here or there because they gain “face” and prestige by having a higher percentage of their graduating class go to American schools. The going rate of a tweaked transcript is about $15 which to a secretary that makes only $450 a month is a lot and totally worth doing. The schools that are the opposite of helpful just force the students to make up their own transcripts. If the school won’t give them one because they know the student is applying to an American school, what else are the parents and agents to do? As a side note, transcripts in China are seen as flexible documents because of the way classes are structured. This structure difference sometimes requires a “normalization” process. So since normalization is common all over China, other requested adjustments (i.e. higher grades and class rank to be sent to an American university), “aren’t seen as dishonest, they are just seen as an attempt to make the school’s students (and therefore the school) look good.” So what I basically gather from what the Chinese do, is that we should go to the inner city schools in Chicago and give all the students As. That way they all look good and all of the inner city issues that we have will be solved. Sounds like a really easy and great solution! So why don’t we do that!? Well, because we don’t lie like that to make ourselves look better! It’s just simply not acceptable! O and the kicker to this is that the Chinese only cheat on American university applications. They don’t cheat on the Chinese ones because getting caught leads to some serious ramifications. But since America is so far away, the Chinese have no problem doing it since the perceived risk of getting caught is minimal. So lesson learned kids, cheat when you won’t get caught. Can’t wait to teach my future five year old that!

And just one last point from the white paper that really just tickles my belly, then I’ll stop, I swear. So the Chinese students who apply to American universities are almost always from wealthy families, meaning they do not need financial aid. However, the Chinese perceive financial aid as an “indicator of applicant’s attractiveness to the school, and not as a sign of financial weakness.” What that basically means is that since all of the applicant’s friends know that the family is wealthy, when they hear that the student received a $10,000 scholarship, they think it’s a merit scholarship for the student being so smart! In other words, stealing money from those students who really need it is just another way for the Chinese to increase their face and look better in the eyes of all of their friends.  I’d insert a sarcastic comment here but I am at a loss for words. I hope you can see why.

So to summarize, the Chinese lie their way into American universities and they think it’s ok and justified. With the number of mainland Chinese studying in America growing 20% annually, this is going to cause many problems in the future. There are many students getting into quality universities that don’t deserve it while American and other foreigners are missing spots that they deserve. The Chinese might think it’s not fair to them if they don’t cheat, but from my perspective, it’s not fair to every other applicant from all over the world. Who’s right here? I know my answer, but what is yours?

And last but not least, all the statistical and informative data was taken from the white paper. O and any really sophisticated sounding sentences were probably taken from there to. So to give full credit to the author, please check out the link of the actual whitepaper here. Cheerio!