Top Chinese officials plagiarised university theses

BEIJING: Top Chinese Communist Party officials plagiarised parts of their university theses, an AFP review has found, testing the government’s pledge to crack down on academic misconduct.

A former vice president, a supreme court judge, a former top public security official, and the powerful party chief in the restive region of Xinjiang are among a half-dozen officials who borrowed from other people’s work without citing them, the analysis showed.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, released last year the first ever national guidelines to enforce academic integrity in research following a series of plagiarism scandals, warning that those caught would be "severely punished".

Last month, the Beijing Film Academy revoked a doctorate awarded to popular actor Zhai Tianlin after finding that sections of a paper published while he was a graduate student were copied from earlier works without references.

The incident led to a heated debate on Chinese social media about "fake qualifications" among China’s powerful and well-connected. An AFP review of 12 master’s and doctoral theses by Chinese officials available on China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) -- a database under the ministries of Education and Science -- found six cases in which passages were copied from other authors without citations.

Education qualifications are closely linked to promotions within the party, experts say, putting pressure on officials to cut corners when trying to amass diplomas while working.