Timely crackdown on 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 provinciallevel 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.

According to reports, the figure described by the advertisement as the “doctor” who invented the shampoo was an actor hired by an advertisement company to play the role.

If the reports are true, the advertisement will almost undoubtedly be making false claims. According to the laws on advertisements and consumer rights protection, those who produce or appear in advertisements and make promises about the positive effects of a product without evidence to back them up should be punished. The reported advertisement has broken all the rules.

Previously, there have been many reports about interest chains behind false medical advertisements. Certain agencies reportedly sign contracts with actors and dress them as “experts” to boast the “positive effects” of medical products. But the actors are only part of the whole interest chain, and the advertising companies play a bigger role.

More importantly, the law requires all TV stations to review and check the content of advertisements before deciding whether to broadcast them. In this case, they obviously failed to do that.

Advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs, health and cosmetic products must not make claims that guarantee efficacy based on endorsements or testimonials. Advertisements for such products should be approved by the relevant departments first before being broadcast.

The company selling the shampoo, the company that made the advertisement, the TV station that broadcast it, as well as the departments that are supposed to regulate the advertisement industry — had anyone of them performed their role, the advertisement would not have been broadcast. It is time to launch a thorough probe to hold those responsible accountable for their misdeeds.