Senior Chinese law researcher target of PhD plagiarism claims
- News site says it has verified allegations that China Law Society figure copied sections of his dissertation from a series of academic journals
A Chinese university has promised to treat seriously claims that a senior figure in the country’s peak body for legal professionals lifted sections of his doctoral dissertation from academic journals, according to a Chinese media report.
The plagiarism claims against Li Shichun, head of the China Law Society’s legal information department, first surfaced online, Shanghai-based news outlet Thepaper.cn reported on Tuesday.
The doctorate was awarded by the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing in 2002, and the news site said it confirmed that entire sections of the dissertation “Study on the Procedures of Preserving Civil Matters”, were directly copied from the 1995 editions of two law journals, Legal Commentary and the Annual of China Maritime Law, as well as another 1997 sociology paper published in the Ocean University of China’s journal.
A staff member at the China University of Political Science and Law’s graduate students’ quality supervision office promised to take the plagiarism allegations seriously, the report said.
Li could not be contacted for comment.
Li has held teaching and research roles at the university as well as Peking University and Beijing Normal University.
Academic plagiarism has been a consistent problem in China for several years – more than 45 per cent of university students and graduates surveyed by China Youth Daily in 2015 admitted copying the work of others to some degree.
However, the problem has been gaining more widespread awareness after a string of high-profile academic cheating scandals.
Last year, the Beijing Film Academy’s Performing Arts School revoked the PhD of actor Zhai Tianlin after internet users found that over 40 per cent of one of his papers was copied from a 2006 article.
Former People’s Liberation Army official Huang Liuyu was also stripped of his doctorate in April after he was found to have plagiarised the work of another student in his dissertation.
Universities around the country are introducing online cross-referencing tools for students to check how much of their work is similar to that in published papers.
If the percentage of duplicated content is above a certain threshold – typically around 30 per cent – their final dissertations are automatically disqualified.
Top Beijing institutions such as Tsinghua and Peking University have also threatened expulsion for students caught copying, and expanded plagiarism checks to daily assignments.
However, China’s standards for academic misconduct still lag behind the West, where most universities have a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism and cheating.
In China, many white-collar jobs demand a postgraduate degree as a minimum requirement, prompting some students to seek the services of ghostwriters.