Serrure, if I remember right the fees are fixed. It's not a bribe per say, its most payment for the advising and supervision services the committee performs. Normally, in Europe/N.America/etc such fees are covered as part of tuition and the professor's salaries, but in China not so much. That said, a lot depends on how many people your supervisor invites to come and supervise, as you need to pay them each individually...likewise, a lot of memmbers invited to supervise do not tend to take the duty seriously, so in that way its a bit more like bribing someone to listen to you (and by extension, pass you, as academic quality is not such an issue). Total cost will vary depending on your field and what institution you are studying at.

i remember a Chinese friend in tears because she didn't have the cash to pay for her lecturer's meal. apparently her and her classmates had to take turns paying and it was her turn. she went on to say that she could borrow the money from a rich friend but then she was worried that she wouldn't have enough left to put in the graduation hongbao (after paying her friend back). she explained that she wouldn't be allowed to graduate if she failed to pay either. she was an undergraduate at the tourism uni on Longquan lu. i have never experienced or heard of the party member spy. not sure how foreigners get on either... i doubt anyone would ask for/demand a hongbao as that would mean loss of face (as MM said).

p.s. she never asked for money and i didn't give it. she didn't want it from me, even after i offered it.

Remember, when hongbao are expected anywhere in Chinese culture, they are not "Bribes". They are cultural elements, ways of expressing thanks, or ways of greasing the system without saying so outright. They are only bribes if they are intended and received as money specifically targeted to cause one party to break the law or screw someone over. Most hongbao are a part of the system, not a way of getting around it.

For example, if you go meet your Chinese girlfriend's family, you should give them gifts or money. It is not like you are bribing them to buy their daughter. It is just a part of the system and the culture.

The students aren't really bribing but "financing" the institution and teachers/staff.

How it works in the West, or at least used to be like, is for teachers to give lower marks to papers that had names that didn't sound "White" or local, hence making the foreign students have to take resits or repeating the year so that they can pay the already inflated foreign student fees. I have relatives and have also met a quite a few people who have experienced this. When they used to study in so called "WASP" countries, they didn't have the technology to check plagiarism yet, and some students took papers from previous students or shared either from the same institution or from others, and the recurring pattern was that the papers that had WASP-sounding names had higher marks than the other papers, regardless of who plagiarised who. Same occurrence for presentations in front of the class and professor: the ones that didn't have a local accent would get lower marks for projects that had nearly the same ideas that were later shared with students of other institutions that sounded local. Obviously plagiarism isn't a perfect example, but this is just to show how things happen inside institutions.

In China, this wouldn't really work, since the fees that foreign students pay has not enough significance to influence the local economy, so they rather get the financing from their own students.

In White countries it's a bit more of a passive advantage, while in China you need to engage in the action. However, people can point fingers as much as they want, but in the end, how they want to work towards their degree is up to them.

Another point ought to be clear: tuitions in UK, US & elsewhere have gone ridiculous - I doubt if many Chinese students have to go into debt for up to 10 years after they graduate - talk about social control! Different ways to do it in different places, but 10 years of debt to pay off means you've got to go to work for the Man, or have no credit rating (probably the best solution).

If it was clear from the beginning that for example tuition is 20,000 rmb a year and final exam 5,000 rmb I would just pay, save the receipt as a souvenir and never talked about it again. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that I have no idea how much money will I need for this hongbao, how often will I have to give it and to how many people. I'm worried that teachers will ask some ridiculous sum of money from me, cause still in many Chinese people opinion white foreigners are awfully rich. That's why I'd like to hear what experience other foreigners had with Chinese universities.

Why would you want to encourage corruption?

@yankee00 What do you mean?

I don't see why a good student would have to bribe teachers. University in China is quite easy compares to what we are asked in our countries.
This kind of things apply to bad students who don't study and still want to pass the exam; they of course have to give some red envelopes and the teacher will be glad to give them a 90/100 even if they have never show up in class for the whole year.