AI-powered fraud: Chinese paper mills are mass-producing fake academic research
Chinese paper mills are using generative artificial intelligence tools to mass produce forged academic papers, a new investigation by the mainland's state broadcaster has found.
The report, which aired Sunday on China Central Television's (CCTV) "Financial Investigation" programme, found paper mill workers using generative AI chatbots to help them each complete over 30 academic articles a week.
Paper mills that sell authorship or fabricate entire papers are a staple of China's competitive academic landscape, where many students and researchers are subject to strict publishing targets.
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In the CCTV report, several paper mills advertised their one-stop-shop ghostwriting services on e-commerce and social media platforms, including eventual submissions to leading academic journals.
Chinese paper mills are using generative AI to mass produce forged academic papers, a new investigation by the mainland's state broadcaster has found. Photo: CCTV alt=Chinese paper mills are using generative AI to mass produce forged academic papers, a new investigation by the mainland's state broadcaster has found. Photo: CCTV>
As these platforms block marketing terms such as "academic ghostwriter", paper mills initially describe their services as academic support or editing. Some even ironically describe themselves as AI detectors - tools for detecting AI-generated content.
The proliferation of cheap generative AI tools has enabled paper mills that previously relied on manual human labour to ramp up output. According to CCTV, one Wuhan-based agency had over 40,000 orders annually, with prices ranging from a few hundred US dollars to several thousand.
The agency marketed its papers as being ghostwritten by university teachers, but CCTV found that they were instead penned by unqualified workers using a variety of AI tools.
While workers were previously restricted to their areas of expertise, AI tools now allow them to forge papers on a wider range of subjects. Another Wuhan-based agency encouraged new job applicants with humanities backgrounds to forge papers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as they demand higher prices.
A commentary published Monday in state-run paper The Beijing News said that China's paper mills were becoming more efficient and produced higher quality papers, making them harder to catch, because of AI.
A screen shot from the CCTV report. Photo: CCTV alt=A screen shot from the CCTV report. Photo: CCTV>
"Various AI tools work together, with some specialising in thinking, others in searching, and others in text editing ... This has further expanded the scale and industrialisation of paper mill fraud," it said.
In January, the Supreme People's Court called for "severe punishments" for the country's paper mills after the Ministry of Education ordered a national audit of retracted papers last year.
A study jointly published in August by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and international publisher Taylor & Francis found that university students in China were vulnerable to exploitation by paper mills due to "limited access" to research ethics training.
The researchers warned that paper mills have also been found to have manipulated images, echoing mounting concerns globally about the use of image generation AI models to forge experimental data.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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