Timely crackdown on gaokao cheats helps guarantee fairness

Since last month, the public security authorities in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Liaoning, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces have been cracking down on the producing and selling of high-tech wireless equipment tailor-made for cheating in exams. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

The action of the public security departments, which comes before the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, that began on Thursday, has eradicated 12 gangs engaged in the business, and more than 100,000 sets of such equipment were seized.

Statistics shows about 9.75 million people will sit the exam this year, the highest number of examinees in eight years. And some of the targeted provincial-level regions have the highest number of gaokao takers, which makes their exams more competitive.

The Amendment to the Criminal Law introduced three years ago stipulates that those caught cheating in the national college entrance exam face up to seven years in prison. Since it was introduced there has been no mass cheating cases exposed.

Despite this, as the harvest of the campaign by the public security departments shows, cheating of various forms in the gaokao has never stopped, and the development of information and telecommunication technologies has made the dishonest practices more difficult to spot.

The scale of the market and the possibility of making easy and quick money have turned cheating in the exam into an organized crime.

Metal detectors and mobile phone signal shielding apparatus should be standard configurations for the exam venues.

Also, the public security departments should not neglect employees of the education authorities and schools, as many cases indicate the gaokao provides them with a golden opportunity to seek profits from their position. Much of the organized cheating in the gaokao can be traced back to the participation of insiders.