Literary badboy and rally driver Han Han (韩寒) is set to take anti-fraud crusader Fang Zhouzi (方舟子) to court for claiming online that some of his works were probably ghost-written. more ›

Weibo seems to be all about sharing and transmitting, but condom company Durex recently found out the hard way that not all Weibo users are as ready or willing to have their work reposted on the internet without citation! The drama started yesterday morning when Durex China weibbed the following short story onto their Weibo account at 8:22am. more ›

Expo organizers will be paying US$3.2 million for plagiarizing a pop ditty by Japanese singer Maya Okamoto, reports Epoch Times. The Expo promotional song Right Here Waiting For You 2010, which premiered on television April 1, was found to be roughly 95 percent identical to Okamoto's 1997 song Stay The Way You Are and thus suspended by April 19. While Japanese Internet users and media outlets are having a field day proclaiming China as a "nation of plagiarists," we doubt Okamoto was at all incensed -- aside from the compensation, this whole song scandal has only helped her flagging career and provided publicity for her upcoming album. more ›

Who woulda thought - the big hubbub over the Expo song which sounded like a Japanese pop ditty from the 1990s has caused it to be withdrawn. Officials of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination confirmed that it had suspended "2010 Waits for You" "for caution's sake" until they have had an investigation. They also stressed that it was just a promotional lead up song and not the theme song, as some people believed. No word on whether they'll be investigating Haibao's strange similarity to Gumby though. more ›

Plagiarism is sad to see, especially when it's of art, and exceptionally when it's too blatant to chalk up to "artistic inspiration". Danwei has a story on a painting called "When I Was Young" by Li Yueliang, an artist from Zhejiang province, which was on display in Jinan at the National Games. more ›

• China targets an academic culture of cut-and-paste [csmonitor.com] "Plagiarism and sheer invention have flourished in Chinese academic circles, adds Stephen Stearns, a Yale University professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who taught two classes at Peking University in 2007, because 'at least until recently, the rewards were great and the punishment was trivial. It paid off.'"
• China clears Johnson & Johnson products after probe [The Times of India] "China’s State Food and Drug Administration has cleared baby products manufactured by Johnson & Johnson after a high-profile and widely publicized investigation to determine if they contained potential carcinogens. The Administration launched its probe on the basis of allegations leveled by an US based activist group."
• Beijing Redeploys Its Carmakers For Global Race [Forbes] "Dongfeng Automobile Co., Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. and Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. have been directed by Beijing to start acquiring smaller rivals in a race to transform themselves into the “Big Two” or “Big Three” in China’s auto industry."

One of our favorite Chinese sites seems to have run afoul of the net nanny: vip.bokee.com has been on again off again, but perfectly viewable with a proxy. Using the proxy we saw an article about a list published in a Chengdu newspaper of the top-grossing authors in China, at least based on royalties from the sales of their books. At the top of the list was a Guo Jingming, a young author (born in... more ›

The lead paragraph of a Calcutta Telegraph article reads:

China has outpaced India in science in two decades and acquired a staggering lead that keeps widening, the most comprehensive analysis yet of Indian and Chinese research has said. more ›

Every Shanghai official above a certain rank has been required in recent weeks to watch tearful video confessions by 11 of their comrades at the centre of a £200m corruption inquiry, Communist party members say.

Shanghaiist likes reading sciencey stuff. We are often seen browsing through the archives of Science Magazine, The Scientific American and New Scientist magazines akin to how your Mum might flick through weekly gossip rags like Who Weekly or OK! magazines. more ›

Peking University, known colloquially as Bei Da, is generally considered China's most prestigious and elite university. Less well-known is how much assistant professors get paid there. If you've been following some of the debates surrounding higher education in China you might have heard complaints that all professors care about these days is money. They are perfunctory about their teaching duties and spend most of their time doing things -- be it teaching at private institutions or lucrative research -- that make them money. more ›