I live in China. I know a black American guy who used to take IELTS exams for Koreans when he lived in Korea. Please think of how flagrantly obvious this was. The Korean students in question had powerful parents but it's still indicative. The entire country of South Korea has had the SAT canceled on at least one occasion when the exam papers were leaked. My girlfriend's friend was dating a guy who sold SAT answers at one stage. As to the culture of cheating my friend's wife sat an English proficiency exam for her cousin that said cousin needed to graduate ~community college as a kindergarten teacher. Those are things that are a matter of public record or personal experience.

There's more in this line from Ed at educationrealist.wordpress.com though I can't speak to their reliability. According to them there are massive threads on college confidential where people reconstruct SAT exams.

Cheating on tests is really common in China and Korea.

So, for example, http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-exam-cheats/

Note that this particular exam was taken by 25,000 people, so that's almost ten percent.

Thanks for the reference, at least you cared to search and show it! 10% of 25,000 for that particular exam does sound a lot, and that's probably why it made national news in the first place. Does it mean 10% of all Chinese students (in China) cheat? Is it a proof that "Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic."? Definitely Not. I can find way more examples where 0% of Chinese students cheat in national level exams (actually, I probably can't, because "nobody cheated in the exam" won't make the news). Does that mean "Chinese students never cheat."? Of course not either. I'm not trying to be the PC police here, but I'm just baffled that a sweeping claim like that got used as the basis of OP's thesis and everybody seems to be agreeing with it. I thought HN's audience could do better than that...

Yeah, this is why I didn't bother constructing a more robust argument showing the clear trend. Consider that you may be unwilling to entertain the possibility that this phenomenon actually exists.

What "trend" are you referring to? "Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic." is the trend? So it used to be not "pandemic" but has become more and more so recently? That would actually be very interesting to read if not merely backed up by some hand waving stats or anecdotal evidences.

Interesting, I must be striking a chord somewhere, so many downvotes, guess I can never figure out what's happening here...