Part of what is astonishing here is the existence of a system that drives such gaming. It makes me wonder what the people who required a science publication were thinking. Were they naive or do they cynically disrespect scientific research?
The article talks about the students not having time to conduct research. But being given a job and not enough time or money to do everything in the most desirable fashion is a widespread management style in both academia and business. There have been articles about medical students in the US not getting any sleep.
Those two things by themselves would not raise eyebrows in the US.
Where I went to grad school long ago, the psychology grad students had to publish a research paper en route to getting a clinical degree. They had a phrase, "published and outa here." I have no idea the quality of the work that got published, but the behavioral sciences are sitting on a "replication crisis" today, that predates China growing exponentially into the research space.
So I don't think it's a China problem.