June 30, 2012

Chinese Cheating

The NYT has an article on the gaokao, the national college admissions exam in China:
Each year, cheating scandals become the talk of China. One common tactic was for students to give their identification cards to look-alikes hired to take the test; later, many provinces installed fingerprint scanners at test centers.

Do even the Chinese find that other Chinese rather look alike?
In 2008, three girls in Jiangsu Province were caught with mini-cameras inside their bras; their aim was to transmit images of the exam to people outside the classroom who would then provide answers. This year, the big scandal involved students in Huanggang, Hubei Province, famous in the past decade for churning out students with high scores; several dozen students were caught there last month for using small monitors costing nearly $2,500 that resembled erasers and that allowed the students to receive electronic messages with test answers.

60 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, 1.3B people ... so lots more students ...

I wonder what the ratio of cheats is in the US compared to China?

Anonymous said...

re: Chinese Cheating

My son got his Ph.D. two years ago in Mechanical Engineering at a top 20 in the world University. His Ph.D. cohort group was six Chinese and one, my son, white.

I asked him about the Chinese and the rumor of cheating on the GREs. He said that it was common knowledge that the Chinese were gaming the test. Professors knew, students knew and (some) of the Chinese admitted that it occurred.

During the Ph.D. curriculum a student had to take the comprehensive exam. At his University this exam was a two day written with one day an "anything goes" math exam of two sessions, morning and afternoon. The second day was a choice of four exams: Design, Thermodynamics, Mechanics of Materials and Control Systems/Vibration. The student had to pick two of the four. If the student passed the four exams he was invited to take an Oral exam where anything in Math and Mechanical Engineering could be asked by two professors over the course of a morning.

At the year of my son's taking the exam, he was the only student to pass on first try all of the written ones and was the only one to take the oral which he passed. None of the Chinese made it through. They all had to take the exam a second time ( 6 months or a year later ) and all had to take one, two or three courses because of deficiencies exposed by the exam.

My son said that the Chinese were smart but they were not as smart as rumored. He felt he could compete with them. He said also, there was no way to cheat on the comprehensives.

Dan Kurt

Anonymous said...

I welcome our new cheating Chinese overlords.

Black Sea said...

Sorry for being off topic, but former sprinter Michael Johnson addresses HBD in sports:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2167064/Michael-Johnson-Why-descendants-slaves-medals-London-2012-Olympic-sprint-finals.html


Has he been hangin' with John Darbyshire?

Kaz said...

@Dan

Chinese nationals? Or American Chinese?

I believe the distinction is important.

john marzan said...

the chinese cheat not to pass the exam, but to get PERFECT scores.

Miley Cyrax said...

"Admission in those cases can be based on factors like musical talent, foreign language skills or athletic prowess, as in the United States. Ethnic minority students sometimes get an advantage."

Sounds like our soon-to-be overlords haven't learned from our mistakes.

Anonymous said...

If Europeans put our minds to cheating, do you think they could do better than the Chinese? To what extent is cheating g-loaded or non-g-loaded (and genetic)?

When I did engineering I noticed that the Chinese cheated like a well-oiled machine. It was not just the occasional slacker copying a homework from his buddies, "just this once" from a begruding friend (the European situation). The Chinese had a system where the smartest of the group would get together and prepare a perfect homework, and all the rest would copy it out. Every homework.

I was not sure what was in it for the homework solvers who did all the work, but nevertheless that's what went on.

Anonymous said...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/the-most-important-film-ive-seen-in-years-last-train-home/259265/

Anonymous said...

@Kaz;"Chinese nationals? Or American Chinese?"

There were five mainland Chinese and one Taiwanese. There were no Americanized Chinese in his cohort year of Ph.D. students.

On the cover of the brochure for the Graduation of the school of Mechanical Engineering when he got his degree, there was a photo of the previous year's Ph.D.s marching in single file with a backdrop of a library on campus. The photo showed six Asians and one white American male.

One story more before I close. After my son was the only person getting through the comprehensives he was asked by some of the Chinese a question. They had decided that my son was not educated in the USA. They wanted to know if he was from Germany. They had come to the conclusion that he had to have been educated in Germany because Americans were not given a decent background in math from their primary and secondary schools. He got quite a good laugh over that trying to convince them he was an American product.

Dan Kurt

Anonymous said...

"One common tactic was for students to give their identification cards to look-alikes hired to take the test;"

Look-alikes? Meaning any of their countrymen of the same gender and age bracket? :)

Kai Carver said...

first hit for "SAT cheating":

Great Neck, NY: ... Prosecutors said 15 high school students hired five other people for anywhere from $500 to $3,600 each to take the SAT or ACT for them.
...
"I'm not surprised," said Robin Tobin-Hess. "I think there's too much emphasis by the colleges on the SATs. Kids are under a lot of pressure to do well and in affluent areas, they're going to do what they can to do it."


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/23/sat-cheating-scandal-widens-as-20-students-charged-in-new-york/

So... "American Cheating?" Do NY peope look alike to each other?

It would be interesting to compare with China regarding propensity to cheat, pressure of exams, or even look-alikedness, but I don't get the point of this post.

Robert said...

Had a fine Filipino Nurse, employed here as a Care Aid, clean my parents' place after hours. Struck me as odd that she required several specific cleaning products eg. toilet bowl spray foam – Mum, or I, had done fine with bleach and a brush. Mentioned it to a friend who spent years in Asia – 'Like, if you're an R.N., 4 year degree, wouldn't your Chemistry knowledge assure you that bleach removes & kills stuff, you don't need specialized products?' His reply: 'She doesn't have that'. Me: 'Whatduyuh mean, we got gallons of bleach'. Him: 'Not the bleach – the knowledge – that's why she won't write Provincial Exams. She isn't an R.N., she knows that the Province will demand laminated, embossed, sealed academic records from the stated Institution in the Phillipines and she can't produce them'.
To my friend, this was endemic and expected. His nephew (Korean) failed an important exam while my friend was in Korea. The kid's Father said 'Be back in a couple of hours'. Father returned, said 'You passed – work harder'. My friend wondered 'How much did that cost him?'
Here in B.C., a bright family member passed the difficult Real Estate Licensing Exam. I opined 'If you, young and bright, found it that tough, how do Iranian 2nd language applicants pass?'. 'Simple', he replied, 'Phone Mo – he writes the papers for $ and tutors the Exam.' Another family member, with a long history in Real Estate, was so disgusted that he phoned the professional body concerned. In short, they weren't concerned.
That's enough for now – another time I'll cover the Mexican M.D., Hindu truck drivers, Pakistani Brits entering Canada, Iranians passing H.R. Block Tax, and Koreans who hire imposters for their full draft(Military Service)requirement.

dearieme said...

Teddy Kennedy was expelled from Harvard for sending in another bloke to do his Spanish exam. Maybe the Boston Irish look alike. Or maybe Teddy, being dim, sent in a Chinese.

Anonymous said...

There was a famous SAT cheating scandal at an elite DC area all-boys prep school about a decade ago:

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/from-the-archives-our-sons-have-something-to-say/

Lugash said...

I am Lugash.

Teddy Kennedy was expelled from Harvard for sending in another bloke to do his Spanish exam. Maybe the Boston Irish look alike. Or maybe Teddy, being dim, sent in a Chinese.

I wonder what happened to the guy who took the test for Kennedy? Did he get kicked out of Hahvahd and then readmitted?

In high school the Korean students pretty much scammed the math exams. On test days all but the brightest student would be sick, then they'd take the test at a later date.

I am Lugash.

Lugash said...

I am Lugash.

The cheating and countermeasures are reminiscent of what prison officials have to do to keep contraband out.

I am Lugash.

Dr Van Nostrand said...

Amazing how academics can compel a people to ditch basic notions of decorum and honor!

I am of course talking about Indian students!

Thats why many Indian students straight off the boat dont do all tha well in America in their first year.

No more cramming or cheating for 1 final exams which will seal your fate.But you have to deal with weekly assignments, quizzes ,mid terms and open book exams!

Anonymous said...

The Chinese had a system where the smartest of the group would get together and prepare a perfect homework, and all the rest would copy it out. Every homework. I was not sure what was in it for the homework solvers who did all the work...

Uhh, hookers and blow?

Seriously, has anyone told The Derb that Zhang Ziyi sold herself for one million dollars per night?

And that she may have done it as many as 100 times?

Evil Sandmich said...

I had asked my Chinese guest daughter about this some time ago if she had taken it. Even though she goes through AP math, chemistry, etc. she said that she "wasn't smart enough" to get a good enough score to get into a Chinese university (thus why she goes to an American university and is able to dodge that test). It is really high stakes, especially in a rather ridged culture.

In addition to the point weights the NYT points out, she also said that there is a policy (I was given the impression that it was official) that one could purchase points on the test for like $10,000 a point. I said that was probably the rough equivalent of someone making an endowment of some sort to an American university to get their kid in.

Peter said...

Fingerprinting has been required for some years for people taking the stockbrokers' exam in the United States due to widespread use of imposters.

Anonymous said...


They had come to the conclusion that he had to have been educated in Germany because Americans were not given a decent background in math from their primary and secondary schools. He got quite a good laugh over that trying to convince them he was an American product.


My wife, who is Chinese, but not from China, gets students in her math classes at a CA high school who do not know multiplication, and they are not all Hispanic (or black).

Anonymous said...


Look-alikes? Meaning any of their countrymen of the same gender and age bracket? :)


Bzzzz, FAIL.

In fact, the Chinese are just as distinct, individually, as Caucasians are, you just have to use a different feature set. Eg, don't look at hair color and eye color.

I have had Chinese tell me that all Caucasians look alike.

Anonymous said...

I was a TA for an EE course. 100% Chinese class. There wasn't a single white kid.

I had a whole group kicked out for cheating....asian girls mainly. (Oh I remember TA'ing another class where the asian girls had some racket going with cheating, guys and boobs.)

But what struck me wasn't the cheating....but how low the test scores were. This was a top university and I got the distinct impression that the Chinese were dragging the whole thing down. They have such high entrance exam scores....but they know jack.

In graduate school I encountered a different problem...The Indians and Asians were all like 30 something year old men who had taken everything before...and I'm 22 taking the class for the first time. That was rough. Got a B+.

The foreign students...Turkish/Chinese... used to stalk me on campus to try to figure out my study habits or something. I had A LOT of fun with them on that.

"Aren't you going to study for the exam?" (I'm sitting in the library) "No...Have you ever read Kafka?" *points to books unrelated to engineering strewn across desk*
Asians look horrified at the thought that...I don't study.

P.S.- I never actually read Kafka..I was too busy studying lol

The secret to Asians is to psyche them out. You have to study harder longer and want it more. BUT NEVER act as though you have studied.

People will spiral down so fast if they think they have to study while you're just fucking off reading Macbeth all day.

Mind games

Mitch said...

The SAT cheating scandal involved Iranian-Americans. Asians in general have cheat like mad: Chinese, mid-Easterners (arabs or otherwise), Indians are tops, in my experience and reading. Koreans and Japanese less so (again in my experience).

If you read about a huge cheating scandal, it's almost always an immigrant Asian group involved.

The Chinese cheat so badly on the GRE that the test was banned in the country, and so the Chinese had to save up a ton of money to take the test in Vietnam--where they cheated. The GRE made the recent changes because they couldn't figure out how to stop the Chinese from cheating, and colleges wanted their money.

Hispanics, whites, and blacks cheat to pass, if they cheat at all. Whites might copy homework to get the busywork done. That's about it. It's not part of American culture.

Anonymous said...

Orientals are good at rote routines -including cheating - they are completely materialistic and utterly lacking in creativity.

Why we continue to let them in is a mystery.

Luke Lea said...

The Chinese have always cheated. It is part of their culture. Indeed, they don't even consider it wrong. Same goes for lying and stealing. Whatever you could get away with. The only loyalty was to one's family -- plus lip service to the state. Torture was also routine, as was wife beating (they used the bamboo, whatever that means). The reason China is in such a pickle today is that they are unable to escape this legacy. A change in civilization is the only answer. And, of course, there is only one alternative. Western civilization. The good news is that Christianity is spreading inexorably: in the countryside, among intellectuals (so-called culture Christians), and, most promising of all, among the migrants in the cities, the ones who are being forced into an alien world away from their families, out of their homes, into those soulless high rises we see all around. House churces are their only contact with humanity.

ziel said...

I've never had a job where I had to check people's photo id's. How hard/easy is it to do? I know under-age drinkers can borrow someone's license who resembles them and usually get away with it. But I have no idea how practical that would be with a test, where the lighting is good, the picture itself is the focus (rather than the birth date), and the actual identity is the focal point (rather than plausible deniability).

Eric Shun said...

When I was earning my MBA at the University of FL in the late '90s, 25% of the class were Chinese. They're English was very, very poor. My American classmates and I wondered how they could get through the program.

Anonymous said...

re: "SAT cheating": Great Neck, NY"

I took the SATs during Spring 1958 with most of my class from an Honor HS. By doing it during the Junior year in HS one could find one's scores and then bone up to retake the tests in the fall so as to score higher during the second time through and still have time to apply to colleges. I did well enough ( won an academic scholarship which existed back then ) so I had no need to study for the SATs that Summer.

The point of the story comes now. One of my classmates, student x, took the test with me at the same testing center. He also did well. I learned that because we all shared our scores. However, one of my classmates, student y, who did not take the SATs in the Spring took them in the Fall. He saw student x taking them at the same time. After the exams he met up with student x and asked him why had he spent the money to retake the SATs. Student x said that he took the test for another student to help him get into a better college.

Nothing ever came of it as far as I know. But SAT cheating certainly existed back in 1958. As my grandmother said repeatedly: There is nothing new under the sun: people never change.

Dan Kurt

Anonymous said...

Comparing the honesty of a third world country whose people are not far removed from starvation with an America which is the wealthiest country in the world is a bit misleading.

Once people enter the middle class in mass, the need to cheat goes down.

Of course., Steve would not dare mention how Jews game the system to promote their own group above others would he?

Anonymous said...

http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/05/photo-an-entire-class-of-high-school-students-receive-iv-drips-while-cramming-for-exams/

These kids must be the ones everyone else cheats from.

Hunsdon said...

Anonydroid at 10:30 AM said: Of course., Steve would not dare mention how Jews game the system to promote their own group above others would he?

Hunsdon replied: Stop it, dude, you're killing me. Say, you're new here, aren't you?

Anonymous said...

Rule of Claw.

Simon in London said...

"I've never had a job where I had to check people's photo id's. How hard/easy is it to do?."

I invigilate a lot of exams - if I don't know the students, I often find it hard to be sure if the blurry face on the student photocard matches the student in front of me. I make a big show of getting down low and examining the faces of students whose hair hides their faces, though.

In general I think that hiring someone to do your exam for you is vastly rarer than paid-for coursework essays, which are the real scourge. We've taken to routine Viva interviews whenever we're suspicious, which is often. Recently we got a complaint from high up that there was 'still too much cheating' - ie, we we were catching too many cheats, *sigh*. My personal preference is to use exams and in-class tests, coursework is no longer reliable.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least Chinese are very industrious, smart, and creative in their cheating.

Maybe cheating is the essence of future power. Just look at Wall Street power and rules of globalism. Look at how Obama got ahead--he won't even release his academic transcripts, prolly cuz he applied as a foreign student--and how Jews turned him into a messiah for having... achieved NOTHING prior to 2008. And just look at how he got the Nobel prize.

Globalism is about cheating the American middle class in favor of global elites.

But there is dumb cheating and smart cheating. Dumb cheating is the sort of thing that runs Detroit. People cheat cuz no one wants to do any real work and cuz they're just lazy.
Chinese, in contrast, wanna do stuff and work hard and make it and produce wealth. In fact, Chinese cheat like crazy because they wanna attain the position to do so much. They wanna go to best school, build biggest business, and etc.

So, it's productive cheating than merely parasitic cheating.
And though I despise cheating of all kinds and the rule of claw sucks, Chinese form of cheating might actually make Chinese more savvy, ruthless, cunning, devious, and etc, all of which are advantageous qualities to have in the global competition. Just look at Jews. I mean look at their rules in the media.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/06/the-menace-of-the-new-mccarthyism/

Jews have rigged the system whereby going after commies and Jews is EEEEEEVil but shutting down anyone with 'racist' views is okay.

In a world of cheater cheater pumpkin eaters, those who are most adept at productive cheating are gonna move ahead.

It's like this.

A smart honest person will beat a dumb honest person...

but a cheating smart person will beat an honest smart person. NO ONE makes it on merit alone.
Thus, cheating is an art as well as a vice. Cheating has been an element of Jewish power for 1000s of years. Of course, if Jews ONLY cheated, they'd be like the gypsies. But if Jews ONLY acted honest, they'd be a successful people but not a very powerful people.
It's honesty + cheating that makes a people great. Jews were honestly hardworking but also expert cheaters to gain the advantage.
Same with Anglo-Americans. They were honest and into work-ethic and all that. But they also cheated Indians, Mexicans, blacks, and others for their own power.
And today, Mexicans cheat with illegal immigration and amnesty.
Learn to cheat for your own kind.

Anonymous said...

At the risk of sounding paranoid, maybe the Chinese elites tolerate and even encourage this sort of cheating.

Why? For the benefit of their own kids. Chinese are familist, and many Chinese elites will do just about anything to ensure elite position for their own kids, especially since if you're not at the top in China, you're at the bottom.

And maybe it's a way of teaching kids INITIATIVE. Chinese are not very creative in their studies and curriculum but they are very creative in their cheating. Well, I guess anything that hones some degree of creativity and initiative is 'good' or useful.

Anonymous said...

The SAT cheating scandal involved Iranian-Americans.

Which one? The one in Long Island involved Jews and white ethnics, I believe.

The one in the DC area involved elite preppy white gentiles.

Anonymous said...

Same with Anglo-Americans. They were honest and into work-ethic and all that. But they also cheated Indians, Mexicans, blacks, and others for their own power.

Somebody fell for the Frankfurt School propaganda - hook, line and sinker.

Anonymous said...

Does this impact the reliability of east Asian IQ estimates?

Goatweed

Anonymous said...

The good news is that Christianity is spreading inexorably

To the extent that Western Civilization under Christianity flourished, I would submit it was due to native character more than the religion.

It worked so long as we retained enough authority over the indoctrination of our own children that our innate character could be passed on to them. Remember that word: Indoctrination.

Indoctrinability is a trait of any people who must technologically adapt—say due to the occupation of environments ecologically distant far from their primate ancestors.

It is not foolish for a young person to adopt that which he was taught by his elders. It is only foolish for his elders to let his children be taught by outsiders.

I’ll say this for Christianity:

It left a lot more of our children’s indoctrination in our hands than has mass media and modern academia.

But it was the camel’s nose in the tent. It was like cowpox to the smallpox we see of contemporary PC.

Mitch said...

Which one? The one in Long Island involved Jews and white ethnics, I believe

Iranian Americans. They may have been Jewish, but they were definitely Iranian.

The long ago one about the prep school did involve whites, I think, but it was also opportunistic cheating, not a planned scheme. The proctor wasn't paying attention.

I do not wish to imply that Americans never cheat, but it's extremely rare in comparison to what we're now experiencing now from the ethnic groups I mentioned.

Anonymous said...

You have to study harder longer and want it more. BUT NEVER act as though you have studied.

People will spiral down so fast if they think they have to study while you're just fucking off reading Macbeth all day.

Mind games

Brits used that ploy to rule the world for a long time. By the way, reading Macbeth does not qualify as "fucking off."

JSM said...

If you read about a huge cheating scandal, it's almost always an immigrant Asian group involved

Aye:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/11/audit-north-dakota-university-awarded-unearned-degrees/

Reading the entire article, it's clear it's Chinese students accepting the degrees they have not earned.

Steve Sailer said...

When I was at Rice U. in Houston, they had an honor code that allowed for conveniences like take-home closed book tests. The local view was that the damn Yankees couldn't manage such an expression of the Southern gentlemen's code.

Anonymous said...

Israel is the main cheater when it comes to stealing US intelligence.

But don't expect Sailer to run blog posts on how Jews have been the primary cheaters on Wall Street.

It's always safer to pick on Asians and Muslims who aren't very vocal in America.

Anonymous said...

"but a cheating smart person will beat an honest smart person. NO ONE makes it on merit alone.
Thus, cheating is an art as well as a vice. Cheating has been an element of Jewish power for 1000s of years. Of course, if Jews ONLY cheated, they'd be like the gypsies. But if Jews ONLY acted honest, they'd be a successful people but not a very powerful people.
It's honesty + cheating that makes a people great. Jews were honestly hardworking but also expert cheaters to gain the advantage."

Yes, many years ago I once met a future White collar criminal who casually confided in me over drinks after a business function that honesty was very important "unless" it was over a huge amount of money.

Pretty devious. Keep your reputation intact for the big score.

He happened to be "Scotch-Irish" (in the ISteve posters' sense), but I don't think his ethnicity is that important (conmen think alike regardless of ethnicity).


Years later I read he was busted by the FEDs for a scheme he got himself involved in (given his casual remark to me that honesty was dispensible under certain circumstances I was not surprised).

He entered a plea deal and managed to avoid jail and retired to a tropical paradise.

Of course not all conmen are so lucky, but sometimes crime or the Law of Claw does seem to pay.

A society built around people like this has inherent instabiities I would imagine (look at the largely unpunished recent Wall street scandals).

Sadly, the world we live in is far from perfect.

Anonymous said...

"Why we continue to let them in is a mystery."

Because 'we' are not in charge.

Anonymous said...

Those bra cams must have been really small.

Anonymous said...

Iranian Americans. They may have been Jewish, but they were definitely Iranian.

You might be thinking of another SAT cheating scandal.

The names here don't sound Iranian:

https://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2011/11/22/more-arrests-in-sat-cheating-investigation/

"Among those charged with taking the test for others were Joshua Chefec, 20, now a senior at Tulane, and Michael Pomerantz, 18, who attended Great Neck North High School; Adam Justin, 19, a graduate of North Shore Hebrew Academy; and George Trane, 19, a graduate of Great Neck South. Mr. Pomerantz, citing a medical condition, told authorities he would surrender Monday; the others turned themselves in Tuesday morning.

Also arrested were eight students charged with paying to have the test taken for them: five from Great Neck North High School, two from North Shore Hebrew Academy High School, and one from Roslyn. Their names were not released because they were minors. A ninth high school student with a medical concern will surrender on Monday.

An additional student, a senior at St. Mary’s High School, a private school in Manhasset, declined to surrender; arrest arrangements were being made Tuesday.

The arrests are the second wave of students to face charges in a cheating scandal that has rattled some of Long Island’s top private and public schools. Test takers are accused of accepting payments of $500 to at least $3,500, according to people briefed on the investigation but not authorized to speak about the details.

In September, Nassau County officials arrested Sam Eshaghoff and six other students, all current or former students at Great Neck North High School. District Attorney Kathleen M. Rice said that between 2010 and 2011, the six students paid Mr. Eshaghoff, 19, of Great Neck, to take the SAT for them."

Anonymous said...

One of the guys who got caught taking the SAT for others 16 while charging $2,500 each said that it was an open secret at school and that others were doing it as well:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57348498/the-perfect-score-cheating-on-the-sat/

"Stewart: During the course of your investigation, what did you discover about the process of taking the SAT and the security associated with taking an SAT test?

Rice: How incredibly easy it is to cheat the system. There is absolutely no security in place whatsoever to prevent criminal impersonation like we see here from happening.

Stewart: So if I went up to any of those kids and I say, "Do you know what this guy did?", they'd all know?

Eshaghoff: Every single person would know who I am and what I do.

Eshaghoff says paid test takers were an open secret among students at Great Neck North. He became the best known, but he says he was not the first.

Eshaghoff: I had heard of it happening successfully in my own high school.

Stewart: So tell me about taking the mental leap from "well, I heard other kids doing it" to "I think I'm going to do this."

Eshaghoff: Well, it all started with some kid approaching me. He's like, "Yo, you're good on your SATs and I'm not. And you know this is possible so how much is it gonna take?""

Anonymous said...

ETS Says SAT Cheating Attempts Not Uncommon

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141698634/ets-says-sat-cheating-attempts-not-uncommon

"Six students allegedly hired a former student to take their SAT test for them. All seven were arrested on criminal charges. The SAT administrator, Educational Testing Service, said last month that such cases are rare. But today, they revised that statement and said nationally, about 750 would-be impersonators are caught at the door, and another 150 are caught after their SAT scores trigger an investigation that compares handwriting samples."

Anonymous said...


When I was earning my MBA at the University of FL in the late '90s, 25% of the class were Chinese. They're English was very, very poor. My American classmates and I wondered how they could get through the program.


As is yours ...

DirtyTricks said...

Ever hear of Duke cancer doc Anil Potti? He appears to have cheated for year.
Falsely claimed to be a Rhodes scholar.
Reported inaccurate lab test results for breast cancer patients.
Two thirds of his papers have been retracted.
Biggest academic and medical cheating scandal I've ever known.
Duke has paid millions in out of court settlements.
He's likely practicing medicine in Missouri.

San Franciscan non-monk said...

I've noticed that in sports, Chinese people tend to be less likely to cheat than others. I've played a fair amount of pickup basketball with Chinese-born guys and they always seem pretty Yao Ming -ish. Very clean players, reluctant to whine much. Generally very good sportsman.

Anonymous said...

"It's honesty + cheating that makes a people great. Jews were honestly hardworking but also expert cheaters to gain the advantage."

The ability to be honest with other people of the same in-group is an advantage, and allows large, effective armies and navies. Acting as a nation instead of a tribe, more like a group of ants.

This is defeated by outsiders pretending that they are insiders within the same society... until a different society of "ants" evolves and makes war to gain territory.

There are advantages to both.

Whiskey said...

Last anon, there is no example of people pretending to be "insiders" and then "taking over" in human history. In every case, outsiders with superior military power simply overwhelmed insiders either as mercenaries or conquerors. Examples: Visigoths with Rome, Angles, Saxons and Jutes with Britons, Normans with the Saxons, and Mongols with the Abbasids.

Widespread Chinese cheating which is an outgrowth on the exam culture from Confucious has made them weak, historically. Unable to grow power because of endemic corruption and mistrust, much like what undid the Spanish and Portugese empires.

RKU said...

Well, I've never heard too much about Chinese-Americans tending to cheat a lot in America. For example, we have lots of national cheating scandals, but I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese name.

My guess is the main factor is the strong Chinese tendency toward social-conformism. In China, there's lots of cheating/corruption, so Chinese raised there follow that pattern. But in America, most Chinese grow up in affluent/suburban/professional families, in which their peer-group and social atmosphere tends to be pretty honest and uncorrupt, so they become that way as well.

For example, when you read about Chinese-American politicians, most of the older-style ones tend to be vaguely corrupt, in a machine-style way, because that's how they were taught to behave in politics, but the younger, newer-style ones more tend toward ultra-WASP-type civic-mindedness, because those were the values of their affluent/professional peer-group.

Anonymous said...

Well, I've never heard too much about Chinese-Americans tending to cheat a lot in America. For example, we have lots of national cheating scandals, but I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese name.

Oh, certainly. I've also never heard about black teenagers in American cities being disproportionately involved in crime. As we all know, the problem is with "youths".

Anonymous said...

I am very offended by this statement. Ive been offended by many of the comments on the page that are stereotyping entire races, but this one angers me most! Clearly you dont know about the Indian educational culture. Yes there is a one year exam, but how dare you imply that the entire nation of us Indian high school students cheats our way through. Most are genuinely hard working students who have just unfortunately grown up in a system that rewards rote memorization, punishes creative individual thinking and emphasizes a few main exams too much. But no, we have a strong sense of honor and sense of effort. Please become informed before making such prejudiced comments.