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Comment by wtrk | Hacker News Reader

Cheating is not endemic within the gaokao system because, as a testing regime, it's excessively vulnerable to cheating. It's not any more cheatable than the SAT, GREs, or other standardized entrance or aptitude exams.

Mainland Chinese society at all levels is thoroughly corrupt and its pretty much impossible to achieve what a reasonable observer would recognize as a materially successful life within the PRC without being actively involved in corruption.

Even simply to muddle along and live hand-to-mouth, content to have most of the doors to success either closed to them from the get-go or slammed in their face, a regular Mainland person has to turn a blind eye to a steady stream of illegal, unethical, and downright harmful behavior on the part of their peers.

That's a part of why (along with many other factors) many Mainland citizens are eager to emigrate to pretty much anywhere that's not the PRC.

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This feels like a massive over generalisation (given the size of china)... Any kind of evidence of this?

Can I provide evidence to prove to you that my generalization is accurate?

Can you prove to me that Antarctica exists? That there were ever dinosaurs? If I'm intent on not being convinced?

Come to China for an extended visit. Reside in one region for a while, then move to another for a bit. Repeat that process a few times until you're satisfied. Being able to read and write Chinese (simplified characters) and speak Putonghua (or, if you stay in one place long enough, the local dialect) would probably speed things up for you.

Even then, you could (if you were determined enough) maintain a conviction that you had just had a run of bad luck in terms of the places you'd chosen to live and the people with whom you'd happened to interact.

I don't know how much time you'd have to spend here to be satisfied.

I do reside (a lot of the time), in GuangZhou, and whilst there is certainly people who are like that, I know a lot who aren't. (Much like any other country).

So I have a counter proof that your generalisation is too broad, hence why I asked for you to clarify.

My take is, (having travelled a fair amount within china). That China is very different depending on which region you are in (much like the US is). So alarm bells ring, when I see people making broad statements such as "Chinese are all corrupt".

You are essentially saying that some weird twist of the CCP causes corruption in the society, else how do you explain Taiwan, and HK? Is that what you are meaning to say? That is an interesting thesis.

You've read the linked article, wherein readers are informed that more than two thousand people (not a tiny number given that only 800 students were sitting for the exam at the school in question -- so think parents and family members) rioted outside an examinations hall demanding that children be allowed to cheat on a test and the local government's response was to agree that enforcement of anti-cheating measures had been too strict.

Are you going to ask me to Google up images of thousands of dead pigs clogging a major river after being dumped there by farmers? Photos of walls of buildings damaged during the 2013 Sichuan earthquake showing that they contain quite a lot of styrofoam beneath a thin layer of cement? Reports of intentional (rather than accidental) food contamination and tampering? The gutter oil rackets -- one of which was busted operating in HK late in 2012? You can find all of that information for yourself.

As for HK, off the top of my head, besides the gutter oil operation there (similar to some of those in the PRC proper) ... Both CE candidates had illegal structures in/on their homes but one managed to squeak through the Beijing-run coronation process before his was discovered, the development secretary resigned last year as a result of a corruption investigation, the head of the city's urban renewal authority resigned recently after being targeted for investigation, the head of security at the airport (a former high-ranking police officer) is being investigated for corruption, etc.

How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?

You seem to believe this kind of corruption doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, and that P.R China is somehow unique in it's corruption. I don't agree with this. I'd say the recent wealth in china means you have very rich, and very poor very close to each other and thus corruption is more visible. But the "chinese" are not any different to any other people. Spend some time in India, there is just as much corruption there (if not more?). Spend some time in the U.S discover how corrupt they are... it's no different the world over, just the visibility changes

All those cases you raise, are indeed bad, but are you saying they are the majority?

The cheating example isn't a show of corruption, it's a show of fairness. If this generation of students sitting the gaokou are all cheating, forcing a tiny subset of them to not be allowed to cheat, is disadvantaging. You seem to understand china fairly well, if it were my child, I'd be angry (even if they weren't cheating), as it is clearly setting that group at a disadvantage. Perhaps if the government did it either ubiquitously or (probably better) at random each year, then the issue of cheating would go away. But to "trial" it in one area, is wrong.

> How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?

Perhaps I am just more optimistic about where things are at.

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