Organizers of exam cheating will face greater punishments
考试作弊的组织者将面临更严厉的惩罚
People who organize exam cheating or offer high-tech equipment to test takers in order to cheat will face heavier penalties in accordance with a newly released judicial interpretation.
根据新发布的司法解释,组织考试作弊或以作弊为目的向考生提供高科技设备者将面临更严厉的惩罚。
"Exam cheating has been a big problem that has occurred frequently across the country in recent years, which has not only disturbed the order and fairness of testing but has also seriously harmed social honesty," said Jiang Qibo, head of the Research Department at the Supreme People’s Court.
To effectively solve the problem, a new crime of organizing exam cheating or offering equipment for cheating was added to the Chinese Criminal Law that came into effect in 2015.
为了有效解决这一问题,2015年,《刑法》中增设了组织考试作弊和提供作弊设备的罪名。
Last year, for example, Beijing Haidian District People’s Court sentenced six people to prison terms ranging from 20 months to four years for using high-tech equipment to provide answers for 33 students during the 2017 national postgraduate entrance exam.
The judicial interpretation, issued by the SPC and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Tuesday, for the first time clarifies that cases involving cheating in major national-level education, qualification or hiring tests - including the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, as well as the postgraduate entrance exam and civil servant exam - should be identified as "serious" crimes.
Moreover, those who organize 30 or more people to cheat on an exam, who provide more than 50 cheating devices or who gain more than 300,000 yuan ($42,000) as a result of the cheating efforts should be identified as "serious" offenders, it added.
This means organizers will face prison sentences ranging from three to seven years, the interpretation said. Cheating equipment - such as tiny cameras and listening devices - that evade security checks and help gain, record, convey, receive or store content related to the exams are covered under the interpretation.