I'll give you that it's likely it's not actually embedded in their culture, of course they don't think cheating is a good thing in general. It's just that everyone's (anecdotal) experience points to the idea that something about their culture has led them to cheat a lot more than in the US. I just simplified it and called it cheating culture

A quick Google shows this has happened at a half marathon before, this time in China itself and 258 runners cheated.

Here's an article written by a Chinese woman about students. There are some good stats in there, though I can't see any links to the actual source of those stats in the article.

Then there's cheating in video games. 99 percent of cheaters banned in PUBG were from China. Apex Legends, which came out in early February, had a massive cheating problem, enough that people were literally calling for region locks. I don't have the hard stats on this, but here's a Chinese player explaining why Chinese players cheat from his perspective. Not that he's 100% right, but if even he is arguing this then it kind of means something.

Then you have the stereotypical Chinese ripoffs of products like video games. You have a popular game come out in the US, China will soon have an attempted replica with all the characters just slightly modified (relevant meme).

Is it just a coincidence that China seems to just cheat a lot across all realms? And even if all the things I cited are complete BS, why are they accused of cheating so much in the first place? Is the US just making shit up?