If in China you write on a search engine like taobao.com (in Chinese) "thesis and packaged papers" you will find hundreds of offers. A university student who doesn't want to undertake the trouble of writing will be able to buy 'finished products' for little money. And vendors don't hesitate to display certificates of satisfied customers, like this one that appeared on an online 'shop' of 'ready-made writings': “This thesis is well written, it has been praised by both professors and my student friends. It's nice to have this shop close at hand, it takes the effort out of writing my thesis. Thank you".
But yesterday a new regulation came into force, issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education, which seeks to curb the phenomenon of false theses. It increases the penalties for 'academic fraud': students can be expelled and teachers who engage in this trade can be fired. And anyone who has obtained a diploma on the basis of a false document will suffer the revocation of the diploma and will have to wait three years before trying to obtain it again. Judging by the reactions on Sina-Weibo (the Chinese 'Twitter'), netizens (Netizens) approve the control measures for a now rampant plagiarism: in the last 30 days, according to some statistics, around 2500 theses had changed hands.
