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Notes on China Blog
Cong Cao, Research Fellow, Levin Institute 
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The Internet Exposing Fraud in China
Mon,07/14/08
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According to BDA, a Beijing-based consultancy specializing in China’s telecommunications, media, and technology (TMT) sector, as of March 2008, China overtook the United States as the world’s number one country in terms of the number of Internet users. There is little doubt that the Internet has changed and will continue to profoundly change various aspects of Chinese’s life.
 The Internet has been successful in revealing misconduct and fraud related to science. A recent case involved Zhou Zhenglong, a 52-year-old farmer and former hunter in Shaanxi province, who claimed in last October to have photographed a wild, South China tiger, which was thought to be extinct. After experts examined and confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, the Shaanxi forestry bureau rewarded Zhou RMB20,000 yuan for finding proof of the continuing existence of the highly endangered species.
However, the Internet became the place where Chinese overwhelmingly challenged the genuineness of the digital picture, the only one of the 71 made available to the public. Having scrutinized the photograph from various perspectives, including photographic technologies, botany, zoology, topography, the Chinese Internet users reached consensus that the picture had been processed with Photoshop technologies before release.
But the Shaanxi forestry bureau did not accept those claims for eight months until recently when it announced abruptly that Zhou Zhenglong was arrested in connection with the set of fake tiger photographs. Zhou apparently had merged the photographs together by pasting the image of the tiger onto a forest setting background. Thirteen members of staff at the provincial forestry bureau were also sacked for their role in the case.
 Back in 2006, a scandal on a much larger scale shocked Chinese when Chen Jin, a computer scientist who returned from the U.S., was found to be involved in the “Chinese chip” fraud. The digital signal processing chip, Chen’s “breakthrough” achieved at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, one of China’s most prestigious universities, was simply a chip that he bought from Motorola. Chen then asked migrant workers scratch away the name Motorola and replaced it with Hanxin, meaning “Chinese chip.”
This trick had passed evaluations organized by various government agencies, from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Reform and Development Commission, to the Shanghai government, whose investment into the project was said to reach at least RMB100 million.
Similarly, the case was first revealed on the Internet. This time, a whistle-blower from Chen’s group posted a message on an Internet bulletin board detailing how Chen had cheated on his invention. For a while, the university where Chen worked and government agencies that had supported Chen denied any wrongdoing.
But eventually, when the bad publicity and evidence accumulated, the relevant party of the government had to intervene. The result is just too familiar – Chen was fired from his posts at Jiaotong University and stripped of his honors and privileges and it is said that the money put into the project was recovered. But Chen has never been prosecuted for cheating, nor have any individuals from any government agency been fired.
These cases show the power of the Internet. Given its reach and the number of users, the Internet is probably a useful channel for ordinary citizens to have their voices heard by the Chinese leadership and to supplement the imperfectness of the institutional mechanism. Although it is unknown why the above-mentioned cases had not been investigated in the first place; these cases should have gotten the attention of the leadership. Those engaged in misconduct or fraud may never know whether an online exposition may be picked up by President Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao, who happen to surfer the Internet. |
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