Ghostwriting business booms in China

Whether a thesis paper can show people's academic achievement, that is a question brought by a ghostwriting report from Beijing News on Tuesday.

Liu Yajie will graduate with a Master of Finance from a prominent university in China, but he is busier ghostwriting papers for clients who want to cheat on their Master of Business Administration (MBA) or Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA). "Some of my classmates are also doing this because it is really easy money," Liu said.

Liu said they often charge half of the fee before the completion of papers, and get the other half after they are done. One paper can cost 2,000 yuan ($297) up to 10,000 yuan, depending on the requirements and deadlines.

This is only the tip of the hidden ghostwriting industry, the trade volume of which had reached 1 billion yuan in 2009. A ghostwriting company can easily make 5 million to 6 million yuan a year, the report said.

Other paper scandal includes buying international journals outside China, and then publishing papers on them for profit, an unnamed source told the paper.

Zhang Zhengfa, associate professor at Communication University of China, said most universities offer MBA and EMBA programs for profit. The teachers may not even know their students, while the students only enroll as a chance to enrich their social life or just buy a degree.

Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, believed that law enforcement, educational and academic institutions were kicking the ball around, with no concrete measures to address the problem, the report said.