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The recent confession to bribery by, the former admissions director for Renmin University, has called into question the integrity of the Chinese college admission system. The President has been mounting a campaign against corruption in China for more than three years, with higher education as one of the focal points. The ruling Communist Party’s antigraft agency has singled out 32 people working in higher education for investigations this year, with China’s education minister saying that corruption would not be tolerated in the education system.

To ensure the healthy development of academia, there has to be fundamental changes made to China’s academic incentive system with a move away from the current method of judging researchers through the number of publications they have in ranked journals. This method leads some to chase after numbers while ignoring academic integrity. With deep roots in Chinese cultural traditions and a fertile soil that nourishes corruption, China’s battle against research misconduct is doomed to be arduous.

In two years, nearly 250 students in one Chinese province have been stripped of their university entrance exam results. Despite her excellent grades, a high school student in Shandong province failed twice her gaokao, the national entrance exam to a public university. Her failure was in fact due to the usurpation of her identity and positive results by the daughter of one of her high school teachers.