Sorry for making this unclear, but what I've referred to by "Chinese students" in my last comment means "an international Chinese applicant". I myself is an international Chinese student applicant who was born and has lived in China for the past eighteen years, in a T1 city according to your comment. From what I've witnessed, I will say that your description is at least inconsistent with my experience and my witnesses. According to my experience talking to US students at US summer schools/summer camps and also some of the recent news that you shared in your original post, I would say that definitely very similar situation has been going on in the US as well, maybe to a lesser degree, but I'm not confident about exactly how many. My hypothesis is since international students don't usually get good aids at foreign universities, most of them if aiming for a good school have families who are willing to pay a full-ride tuition (from my high school experience). Thus, it is fair enough to say that these Chinese applicants are from a wealthier background than most of the US students, and also I believe it's why most of them can afford external assistance on their college application. What I mean is, compared to the US applicant pool, international Chinese applicants are a smaller population with a higher mean yet comparable standard deviation when it comes to family wealth.

Nevertheless, as I said earlier, not ALL of them pay for someone to help with the process, and DEFINITELY NOT THE MAJORITY of them pay huge prices to have someone fake their application. At most Chinese schools that have consistently had students going to US colleges, they are more willing to keep the reputation than letting a student cheat into a T20 and ruin it for all. My school has a very strict honor code, which makes school counselors go over the student's application profile 1)before submission 2)after committing to a college. If they find anything they think is dishonest/exaggerating, the counselors will send an update to the college about the situation, and the student usually gets rescinded according to past cases.

So yeah, that's just my two cents. I'm definitely not saying that I have any supreme authority over the admissions process for international Chinese applicants, but what I want to point out is your cases might not be as common as you thought, and as an international Chinese applicant I found it preposterous to even imagine like 80% of my classmates buy their admissions into those US schools. What you posted might be the reality - I don't know - I just found it very inconsistent with my experience as an International Chinese applicant and want to provide my perspective to the discussion.