I remember a case from last year (?) where Chinese students sued for the right to plagiarise. IIRC, their argument was that their predecessors committed plagiarism, so it would be unfair to bar them from doing it. (And I think I heard they won the case.)
I can’t seem to find an article that specifically is about the recent case. A little help?
I haven’t heard of a case as such, but can verify that originality is considered an overrated virtue here. From the title, I assumed the thread was going to be “like normal plagiarism, but more needlessly complicated.” Anyway, I’ll ask around.
I haven’t heard of that case, but I wouldn’t be surprised. In some programs, including the one I taught in), plagiarism can be actively encouraged and even taught- kind of like how we teach people to paraphrase, but without an emphasis on citation. The theory would be that it’s better to turn in something good and a little bit cribbed than something bad but origional. Artful plagiarism was considered a helpful skill to be practiced and used.
If a school had a precedent like that, I could see how it would be unfair to suddenly change up the rules on people.
Wow. I have never heard of any school that condoned plagiarism. Most obviously, they wouldn’t be paying for TurnItIn if they allowed it.
You certainly can cite other works, but mentioning them as though they’re your own is a serious offense against any academic code.
And the purpose of an education is to learn and to become a better thinker. Plagiarism means you’re not learning how to do anything other than take credit from other people’s work.
RealityChuck, how many Chinese schools are you familiar with?
In the western academic tradition, it is. In a lot of other cultures education has other purposes. Chinese students have been plagiarizing their way through universities since the time of Confucius.
For what it’s worth, at my job, almost all my writing starts by taking a previously written document, and adding to and subtracting from it to suit the particular application. (I guess it’s not technically plagiarism because my company owns the copyright on all of it.) It wouldn’t have been a bad thing to teach this skill in college, in my opinion.
It isn’t even thought of as “plagiarism”: you’re actually supposed to learn what your betters thought up, rather than think on your own. Not so different from the way I was taught Translation Science in a UK university, or the way many Spanish lawyers get their own degres: the best regurgitater wins (in the case of the Spanish lawyers, it’s mostly a case of going overboard with the need to quote chapter and verse of the appropriate law by heart, as if books still were being copied by hand).
I have not heard any case as such but to be honest, plagiarism is too rampant nowadays. As mentioned by one here, even in the offices, articles are being written based on another article. This issue can not be helped in my honest opinion as people often rely online for their research instead of doing it the right way.
Interesting, then, that you don’t provide attribtion for the quote in your own signature line. 
Please name these ancient Chinese universities??? Also, Confucian students werent plagiarizing; they had to memorize and regurgitate the classics. This was useful because these ‘schools’ were for the training of government officials.
I don’t recall a court case. I recall a riot.
That’s it! I misremembered there being a court case.
I remember ‘We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat’ from the story I heard on NPR.
Thanks!
Why reinvent the wheel?
That’s not plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s words unchanged. Or changing them so slightly that they are indistinguishable from the original. If you take something and add here, subtract there, to adapt to a different situation, that is a new work. Of course you should credit the previous work, but even if you don’t, that is not plagiarism.
Right. The historical Chinese model of education was based on memorization of the classics and the ability of the student to correctly locate the answers to life in those books and recite the appropriate quotations at the right time for guidance.
Imagine the following essay question: “Is war justified?”
The Western student is expected to recognize various historical opinions and observations, come up with their own theory, find supporting arguments in the historical literature, providing applicable quotations or cites, and show how their theory is supported by those facts. They may also be expected to discuss potential problems in their opinion and how future research could help refine the answer (more of a grad school level requirement).
The Chinese student was historically expected to recognize that this question was answered by such-and-such philosopher in such-and-such book, and correctly recite the appropriate passage. They must quote the correct passage, not just a random Confucius quote. They would not be expected to expand on the idea, because who are you who would dare to think you are better than that awesome philosopher who gave us so much! You’re just a kid! Your ideas are nothing. Cite? Why would you be so condescending to the instructor to mention that that quote comes from Confucius (or whomever)? By mentioning the author you are saying that the instructor is an idiot for not already knowing that.
That’s still not plagiarism. If the expectation actually is that you are using somebody else’s words, you aren’t taking direct credit for them. Rather, the implicit assumption is that the student or examinee isn’t using original thoughts at all.
That’s at odds with expectations in the article above and what is ostensible current policy in China where the students weren’t expected to regurgitate verbatim passages but to develop their own responses.
Might as well say that despite laws to the contrary, bribery is perfectly acceptable, too. It may occur, but that doesn’t necessarily make it legal or acceptable, patronizing “east vs west” arguments notwithstanding.
We actually had a fairly intense argument in our MBA program about this very thing. Our Chinese colleagues were basically pooling their resources, coming up with THE conclusion for the papers / projects, and each was then presenting the same basic thing as their own work.
In other words, they all were in cahoots with each other and all wrote papers with the same subject, basic argument and resolution. The professor clued in when ALL the Chinese students had essentially produced the same paper, and none of the American, European, Indian or Latin American students had done so.
They honestly didn’t see what they’d done wrong- to them, it was a collective effort, and if someone had the right answers, or a good answer, they were expected to share with the group, who’d all take advantage of that.
To the rest of us, it seemed like cheating- the unwritten expectation was that non-group projects were expressly individual projects, and you were to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
Another similar and fascinating difference was that in classes, the Chinese (and to a lesser extent, the Indian) students would get absolutely consternated with our professors when they’d pose a problem or a situation, and not also pair that with where/how to come to THE single right answer, or just what the single right answer was. The idea of analyzing it and coming up with something original like that was really disconcerting to them because their education to that point had been about finding and regurgitating an already discovered solution.
But I think part of the argument is that Chinese society still largely follows the older paradigm, where quoting the masters is the key. So it’s hard to make people think originally when they grew up in a culture that demands that they admit that they don’t know nothing about nothing, bow before the masters, and quote them humbly.
Yup. China hasn’t (until recently) been about thinking for yourself. It’s been about herd conformity, and that the leaders know best. That doesn’t change overnight, or after a few classes. It takes a cultural change.
What was the result fo that argument? Did the teacher fail all of them? Were they told that outside China, a student was expected to come up with their own original answers?