Washington——

China is cracking down on academic research fraud following news in January that publishers had retracted thousands of works by Chinese scholars in recent years. However, observers say solving the problem will be difficult because it is so widespread.

According to the scientific magazine Nature, some 14,000 papers were retracted from English-language journals in 2023 alone, three-quarters of which involved Chinese co-authors.

Last month, China’s Ministry of Education gave universities a deadline to submit a complete list of academic articles retracted by journals over the past three years, allowing the ministry to review retracted research and determine how widespread fraud is in China’s academic environment.

Although the results of the Ministry of Education review have not yet been released, Chinese scholars, students and professors say the problem is widespread.

Part of the problem, they say, is that it’s easy to get paid for research written by ghostwriters and published in low-quality journals.

“If you have no financial problems, you can ask others to do research for you. Whether it is publishing a paper or looking for a journal, they have such a one-stop service.” Sun Fugui, a former graduate student at Ludong University in Shandong Province, told VOA Chinese Net said. “Not just students, even teachers use these ghostwriters.”

Sun added that another problem is that low-end Chinese academic journals often publish fraudulent studies without checking quality because they have previously published these articles without strong domestic backlash.

“The purpose of these journals is not to publish good papers, nor to let others see their results.

Great academic achievements have been achieved. “Sun said. “Their purpose is to satisfy students and

Teachers are required to publish papers. ”

Yang Ningyuan, the former director of the Institute of Psychology at Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, said he had received at least a dozen calls from strangers offering to publish articles for him in exchange for cash, but he rejected them all.

Yang told VOA Chinese: “I know a friend who told me privately that he helped eight people write their doctoral dissertations and charged 20,000 yuan for each dissertation. These Ph.D.s eventually passed.” It’s basically a Ph.D.! ”

Analysts believe the political nature of China studies is partly to blame for academic integrity issues.

Sun Yun, a senior fellow on China at the Stimson Center, a think tank, said that both American and Chinese academic cultures reward scholars who publish a large number of papers.

“The difference, however, is the transparency of information, freedom of academic exchange, and access to China research. All of these are strictly controlled by the Chinese state,” Sun Yun said in a statement to VOA. “If the data was fabricated at a U.S. university, that person’s colleagues and peers would be able to learn about it and question them. But if the fabrication occurred in China, it would be difficult or impossible to verify.”

Perry Link, a distinguished professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside, said China’s massive fabrication of research reflects officials’ disregard for the truth.

“The fabricated research is part of a broader pattern of official language use in China in which the value of a statement is not based on whether it is true or false, but on whether it is true or false,” Link told VOA in a written statement. Does it ‘work.’” There is no way to “suppress” in such a system. The problem lies in the design of the system itself. “

Political involvement in research can also prevent researchers from producing high-quality new studies, Link said.

“Value judgments about universities are ultimately made by political authorities,” Link said. “Cutting-edge research, even in technical fields, is often best done by free-thinking people who see themselves as being at the cutting edge rather than being ‘ruled’ by political authority.”

Zhang Mingxin, a fourth-year undergraduate student at a Beijing university, said academic fraud and the government’s politicization of data made his research difficult.

“Everyone knows that Chinese research has been plagiarized and falsified, but it is no secret that doing so will make research very difficult,” Zhang told VOA Chinese. “Under the strict control of the government, a lot of data is difficult to retrieve, especially some topics that are relatively sensitive. If a social survey needs to be conducted, it will definitely be very difficult, because when people make relevant remarks, the government will definitely censor them. If they are not careful, they Maybe even sent to jail.”

Sun Yun believes that Chinese universities will lag behind other global universities as the issue of academic integrity remains unresolved.

The Department of Education has not yet released a plan to alleviate these concerns.

“Chinese academic circles are not known for their creativity, and plagiarism has only become more serious in recent years,” Sun Yun wrote. “As Chinese scholars try to compete with their global counterparts, the quality of their research will increasingly be exposed.”