> these are cultures where they think this kind of behavior is actually acceptable, they would assume it's the fault of the journal for accepting the paper. they don't see the loss of reputation to be a personal scar because they instead attribute blame to the game.

I have a relative who lived in a country in the East for several years, and he says that this is just factually true.

The vast majority of people who disagree with this statement have never actually lived in these cultures. They just hallucinate that they have because they want that statement to be false so badly.

...but, simultaneously, I'm also not seeing where you see the authors of the papers - I only see hallucitation authors. e.g. at the link for the first paper submission (https://openreview.net/forum?id=WPgaGP4sVS), there doesn't appear to be any authors listed. Are you confusing the hallucinated citation authors with the primary paper authors?

In that case, I would expect Eastern authors to be over-represented, because they just publish a lot more.