THE Southern Metropolis Daily in Guangdong Province reported Sunday morning on Sina Weibo that one of its reporters had infiltrated a fraud gang that hires university students to take the two-day national college entrance exam for “clients.”

    The hired test-takers produce a fake ID at the exam venue and can get a considerable reward if they get a high score, which could help the client win a spot at a top-tier university, the report said.

    Parents would pay syndicates as much as several million yuan to have college students take China’s grueling National College Entrance Exam, or Gaokao, for their high school children, the report said.

    The Southern Metropolis Daily reporter, who went undercover at a surrogate exam-taker agency together with college students in Wuhan, Hubei Province, said that the surrogate exam-takers used their real photos on forged identity and test cards with the personal information of the real exam-takers.

    In other cases, all the personal information of a surrogate exam-taker used to register and take the Gaokao was fabricated so the test scores and the forged identity could be sold to students to use the forged identity to enroll in college.

    In such cases, surrogate exam-takers could earn 25,000 yuan (US$4,030) for achieving scores that meet the requirements of first-tier universities and 20,000 yuan for second-tiered ones.

    One of the alleged surrogates surnamed Li told the Southern Metropolis Daily that he started to take the Gaokao for other people when he was a college freshman and this is his fourth year. Li said he came from a poor family but has had earned over 100,000 yuan taking the Gaokao for high school students. He had also helped recruit many other surrogate exam-takers for the agency.

    After digging out details of the gang and its operations, the journalist reported the case to the police, the newspaper said.

    This year, 9.42 million Chinese high school students, slightly less than the population of Sweden, sat for the Gaokao, deemed the “battle to determine fate” and the only way most Chinese students can be accepted to a Chinese university.

    Chinese, math and English are the three main subjects of the two-day test.

    Calling for the installation of more advanced identification machines to confirm exam-takers’ identity rather than just relying on test monitors, the Southern Metropolis Daily report soon gained wide public attention.

    The Ministry of Education immediately released a statement on its website, vowing to expel the surrogate exam-takers from their universities, urging local police to conduct a thorough investigation. Cheating on the Gaokao could be a punishable crime in serious cases, it says.

    Jiangxi police said Sunday they have detained two suspects and said the cases are under investigation.

    The ministry also launched a campaign June 2 against the sale of wireless devices frequently used for cheating on the Gaokao.

    Various measures to prevent cheating have been implemented in different regions. Students in Sichuan and Liaoning provinces have to go through a fingerprint and iris-matching process before they are allowed to take the exam.

    Drones have been used in Henan Province to detect wireless signals, and fingerprint identification has been used in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to bust surrogate exam-takers.

    Last year, Henan police investigated and cracked down on a similar case. Over 80 people, including surrogate exam-takers, test monitors, education officials and parents were given punishments ranging from warnings to job dismissals.

    In the last decade, Gaokao-related stress has been eased by a doubled college admission rate. But the link between Gaokao results and college admission remains strong, said Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing.

    Despite criticism that the test is overly stressful and emphasizes rote memorization and that because of this more students choose to study overseas, people still believe in the value of the Gaokao, which provides equal opportunities for exam-takers from both rural and urban areas, he said.

    The number of exam-takers increased slightly after declining for five consecutive years. The number of exam-takers peaked in 2008 at 10.5 million.

    In 2013, a reform blueprint from Chinese authorities said that the key to Gaokao reform lies in the separation of exams and admissions.

    Gaokao scores can serve as a basis for universities to evaluate students, Xiong said, adding that with separate exams and admissions criteria, schools will eventually break free from the exam-oriented education system. (SD-Agencies)