“China's Plagiarism Problem”

Posted: 26 May 2010 07:38 PM PDT

Much has been made about whether China is a rising power that can go the distance. The numbers posted by the world's soon-to-be second-largest economy indicate China has already gone this distance and is now positioned for more growth, but what happens behind the numbers is not always as clear-cut.

China's economic miracle, built largely on major capital investments and inexpensive labor, is now attempting to shift to the next level of economic development, built upon innovation and design or the value-add components of economic growth. China's universities will be the source of much of the brainpower propelling China to this next level. But problems endemic to China's higher education system, specifically plagiarism and the lack of academic integrity, will render this journey quite difficult.

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When given English-language writing assignments, it is common for Chinese students to rely upon translating Chinese sources into English and passing it off as their own work, or simply copying and pasting directly from Wikipedia.

Acknowledgement from students that copying the ideas of another person, combined with threats of a failing grade and being expelled from the class, still did not deter the students from plagiarizing. It is not such a surprise that this behavior was not easily curtailed when plagiarism extends into the upper echelons of Chinese academia.

Some examples include an associate professor at Tongji University who resigned from his position after plagiarizing a test given to his students from a test given at another college; the vice president of Southwest Jiaotong University, who was found guilty of lifting large parts of his doctorate dissertation from the work of a Nobel-nominated Chinese economist; and the president of Wuhan University of Technology, who was alleged to have copied the work of a Chilean scientist in a paper submitted to a national science conference.)

Understanding why plagiarism and a lack of academic integrity are embedded in the Chinese higher education system is important for understanding why China will find it difficult to take its economic growth to the next level.

Plagiarism and the lack of academic integrity it engenders are intricately connected to the larger debate about intellectual property rights (IPR) in China and the government's promoted idea of a harmonious society to support stability. Western countries, either unilaterally or through the WTO, continually threaten to impose sanctions against China for piracy of products ranging from movies and computer software to semiconductors. IPR are hard to enforce from without, and only gain traction when there is an indigenous respect for such rights.

Running counter to IPR enforcement is the idea of community, which is very strong in China. Harmony is a historically important value in Chinese society, vigorously marketed by the Communist government to encourage stability. A strong sense of community promotes both stability and harmony, but subsumes the individual. The powerful force of community that envelopes the individual begets the idea that all parts of the community can be used by the members of that community any way that they see fit, including ideas. In this paradigm it would be absurd for an individual to lay claim to an idea and receive credit from other individuals for that idea when the community is supposed to be paramount to the individual. IPR cut across the idea of community and the ownership of ideas because they create a competitive marketplace of individual ideas, which could ultimately undermine the stability and harmony of the community.

This explanation may seem abstract, but taking this explanation and applying it to a university classroom illuminates why plagiarism will remain a serious problem for China.

Computer Software

Wednesday, May 26, 2010