The Wang Hui plagiarism incident refers to a series of academic integrity allegations raised in 2010 against Wang Hui (汪æÂÂ), a prominent professor at Tsinghua University. The dispute centered on claims that portions of Wang's 1988 doctoral dissertation, later published as the book Resisting Despair: Lu Xun and His Literary World (ãÂÂÃ¥ÂÂæÂÂç»ÂæÂÂï¼Âé²Âè¿ åÂÂå ¶æÂÂå¦ä¸ÂçÂÂãÂÂ), contained unattributed textual borrowings from multiple sources. The case sparked intense debate about academic ethics in China and the standards of scholarly attribution.
On March 10, 2010, Wang Binbin (çÂÂ彬彬), professor at Nanjing University, published a 12,000-word exposé titled "The Question of Academic Ethics in Wang Hui's Scholarship" in the journal Southern Metropolis Cultural Review (ãÂÂÃ¥ÂÂæ¹é½å¸ÂæÂ¥ãÂÂ). The article alleged that Wang Hui's dissertation contained over 30 instances of "inappropriate citation," including:
Wang Binbin argued these constituted "serious violations of academic norms" rather than accidental oversights, noting that the 2004 revised edition retained most disputed passages.
In a March 25, 2010 statement, Wang Hui acknowledged "citation irregularities" but denied intentional plagiarism, attributing issues to "formatting inconsistencies" from merging dissertation footnotes into book form, "technical errors" in 1980s Chinese academia's nascent citation standards, and "political motivations behind the timing of allegations".
Over 80 scholars signed an open letter arguing that allegations ignored "historical context" of 1980s Chinese academic practices, that critics conflated "citation flaws" with deliberate plagiarism, and that the attack reflected ideological opposition to Wang.
A group of 91 international scholars, including Perry Link and Andrew Nathan, countered "basic scholarly ethics are timeless," rejecting the "different era" justification. They also noted similar passages remained in post-2000 reprints without correction. They called for Tsinghua University to conduct a formal investigation.
On August 3, Huang Yingquan, a professor at the School of Literature at Capital Normal University, analyzed why Wang HuiâÂÂs doctoral thesis advisor Tang Tao and others were deceived by Wang Hui:
On August 5, Wang Hui commissioned a law firm to send a lawyerâÂÂs letter to Wang Binbin, stating that âÂÂthe accusations in your series of articles that Professor Wang has plagiarized and plagiarized are false and may constitute defamation of Professor WangâÂÂs reputation.â After receiving the lawyerâÂÂs letter, Wang immediately began writing âÂÂRevisiting the Plagiarism Issue of Wang HuiâÂÂs âÂÂThe Rise of Modern Chinese Thought,â stating that if âÂÂResisting Despairâ contained some original content, then âÂÂThe Rise of Modern Thought,â âÂÂto paraphrase Eileen Chang, can be said to be crawling with lice under its gorgeous coat.âÂÂ
Despite petitions, Tsinghua's and CASS' administration declined to reopen Wang's 22-year-old dissertation case, stating that no current university regulations mandated retroactive plagiarism reviews.