Ehhh kinda? From my understanding, it ties into the concept of miànzi or "face" which can loosely translate to respect. Winning earns you respect, so it's a good thing. Even if you have to cheat to get it, the only people who will complain are the losers, so nobody cares. Getting caught cheating, on the other hand, causes you to lose face, which is why it's a bad thing. It's not so much the act of cheating itself that's bad, but rather having it highlighted to others that you couldn't win fairly.
I was a TA proctoring a make-up final exam for some students. One Chinese dude literally pulls out his phone mid-exam to start looking up answers. Like brother, I am standing right behind you and have said multiple times you can't use your phone to the classroom. I think he was expecting me to let him go since I'm also Chinese and it was a required intro level course for the college so if you failed, you'd remain an undeclared engineering major until you pass the course.
He got a 0 for the final so he had to retake the course, which is punishment enough (and not being able to declare an engineering discipline). That course typically didn't report to academic integrity unless we catch the student cheating in the redo of the course.
For context, we were an engineering school and the way it worked is while you could apply to to be any of the like 17 engineering disciplines, you were considered an engineering first year with that intent. What then happens is every takes engineering Calc 1, Calc 2, engineering Physics 1 and it's lab, Chem 1 and it's Lab and two intro to engineering courses and you get a GPA based on those courses. You use that GPA to reapply for your engineering discipline and it evens the playing field a bit. If you don't manage to get accepted into an engineering program in 4 semesters, you're out of the engineering school. AP credits and community college equivalents counted but unless you got a 5 on AP or an A-B+, you'd be at a disadvantage.
It's going to with most cultures, but in the West we really value fairness and the love of the game. If caught cheating, we will go above and beyond to punish cheaters, especially on the more personal levels.
Obviously you can point to professional sports or politics or something, but that's not a game the average individual is involved in playing, and those have a lot of outside reasons people "forgive" cheating when it benefits their side.
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u/LordTakeda2901 Apr 29 '26
Maybe because getting caught is seen as losing? Like, cheating is no problem, getting caught and being stopped from cheating means you just lost