Honesty is an essential element of China's push for innovation
Being truthful about mistakes is the first step towards credibility as a technology leader
How innovative is China these days? The answer is getting increasingly unclear after a series of embarrassing events.
First there was Fudan, one of the most prestigious universities in China, and then Baidu, the No1 homegrown search engine. The two incidents have forced people to rethink how competitive China could be, from its education level to its technology development.
Late last month, Shanghai's Fudan University launched a new promotional video to celebrate its 110th anniversary, which was quickly criticised by internet users in China and Japan for plagiarism.
The Fudan video turned out to be largely copying a 2014 video made by University of Tokyo. Fudan officials initially denied any wrongdoing but later apologised due largely to rising pressure from public opinion. If one of the best universities in China can't even get its anniversary video right, what else can we expect?
Last week, Beijing-based Baidu finally decided to sack the lead scientist of a special research team that was disqualified for breaking the rules in an international competition testing artificial intelligence (AI). The team was left embarrassed after the organisers of the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge kicked it out of the race last month.
Baidu initially denied the claims of wrongdoing, saying it had made an "honest mistake" by exceeding the number of weekly submissions allowed to improve its standing in the test, which involved an image-recognition algorithm. It took until last Thursday before Baidu said it had axed some team members as it had "zero tolerance for such behaviour".
The two cases are completely unrelated. Some supporters of Fudan have tried to defend the university by saying the problem was just a promotional video, which has already been withdrawn, so let's put an end to the little drama.
For Baidu, the company didn't think its scientists meant to "cheat" in the contest. As the company initially explained to the media, it was just an "honest mistake". I will let readers judge how honest such an explanation from Baidu is.
The two cases come at a time when top leaders including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang are keen to aggressively expand the nation's technology sector and develop its homegrown cutting-edge science and technology to grow the economy, and perhaps to strengthen its military too.
To be fair, the government and many local technology businesses have done a lot in recent years to clean up their perceived image as imitators.
Indeed, it does take time to learn how to be innovative, but perhaps the most important thing is credibility. No credibility, no respect - no matter how good your technology is.