A recent Legal Daily article gave some details about the business of ghostwriting graduation theses in China.
“Due to the large demand, producing graduation theses has become an industry and many services are provided. They include ghostwriting, plagiarism checking, and plagiarism prevention.”
In March 2018, Zhang Feng (a pseudonym), a state-owned enterprise employee, became involved in the ghostwriting business to earn some extra money.
Zhang told the reporter, “Somehow I was connected to a social media account, which is like an intermediary or agent. The account would receive an order for writing a thesis, and then broadcast it to look for people who would like to fill the order. Then the order taker directly contacted the buyer to negotiate a price.”
“The buyer’s needs are varied. For example, someone placed an order for everything to be done, from designing all the way to programming. Some buyers already have a draft design and only need to have the thesis written. Some have already finished writing the thesis, but need to check for plagiarism and make any adjustments needed to avoid plagiarism. There are also some people who want to modify the paper’s format and come up a power point presentation.”
“Most of the students who have such a need are junior college students and undergraduate students. As far as graduate students, according to Zhang, most of those hiring ghostwriters are part-time MS/MA students who also have a job.”
Source: Legal Daily, July 12, 2018
http://www.legaldaily.com.cn/index/content/2018-07/12/content_7591993.htm?node=20908