TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — So far during this election cycle five politicians have been hit with accusations of plagiarizing their theses, and one accused of pretending to go to a high school he didn’t attend.
One of these, against the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) now-former Taoyuan mayoral candidate Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), has had serious political repercussions, not just for the party’s campaign there, but across the board (the subject of my previous column).
Lin stepped down as the party’s candidate after National Taiwan University (NTU) ruled his thesis was indeed plagiarized, though he is firmly maintaining his innocence. Another thesis by Lin is under review at Chung Hwa University and it was expected to deliver its decision by next week, but the release of the results are now delayed.
Lin wasn’t the first to face accusations of plagiarism this year. That happened to Kuomintang (KMT) mayoral candidate Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) over her doctorate from the University of Southern California, just days after she was named the party’s candidate. The story dropped out of the press soon after, and it appears the accusation was baseless.
During the media free-for-all and fallout from the Lin case, three other accusations appeared. The first was against legislator and KMT candidate for Nantou County commissioner Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華), who is probably most famous for dressing up as Wonder Woman and acting as an MC at Han Kuo-yu's (韓國瑜) campaign rallies during his Kaohsiung mayoral and later presidential races.
Hsu seems to be taking the accusations calmly, mostly she focused on attacking the Lin Chih-chien case and accused the DPP of attempting to use her as a “scapegoat.” She says she will explain herself to Fengchia University, which will complete its review in two months, while the KMT has issued a statement saying they will respect the university’s decision.
Curious case
Then there is the curious case of the KMT's Nantou County Council Speaker Ho Shang-feng (何勝豐). According to his election documents, four years after graduating elementary school he was awarded his master’s degree at Asia University for his thesis: "Association Analysis of Schizophrenia Patients and Common Endocrine Disease, Metabolic Disease Relationship."
Alas no, this servant of the people of Nantou was not a prodigy. He admitted he “referenced” a fellow student’s work, but also said with no apology: “As for all the accusations, I have no opinion, I was able to serve many terms as councilor, as speaker, and I rely on local service to get voter’s approval.”
Next to face allegations was one of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) biggest stars, legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如). The person levelling these accusations was none other than Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇), formerly a star in the Green Party, who later, as a DPP Taoyuan county councilor, was ousted in a recall.
Tsai is, like Hsu, taking it calmly. She has stated she did not commit plagiarism, feels no need to justify herself to the media nor step down as a lawmaker, and she’ll respect the judgement of the scholarly ethics committee that will review her thesis.
Though not thesis related, the KMT is accusing the DPP’s candidate for Keelung Mayor Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) of lying about being an alumnus of Keelung Middle School. The KMT called on him to apologize and quit the race.
Why is it happening now?
So, why have all of these cases arisen in this election cycle? Probably due to some precedents.
That Ko Chih-en was targeted first was probably no accident. Her predecessor as KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate in the 2020 by-election Jane Lee (李眉蓁) was caught for plagiarizing 96% of her thesis, and eventually had to tearfully apologize.
Though her campaign was already having problems (which I accidentally played a role in), the thesis scandal was probably what finally sank Lee’s campaign. She lost in a landslide.
That is probably still fresh on political operatives' minds, and this time around they went hunting for dirt. The successful take-down of Lin Chih-chien has only upped the stakes.
Another factor is that it is now far easier to use online tools to detect plagiarism. It’s harder to hide now.
Ma Ying-jeou and the American
There are, however, two earlier sets of allegations regarding theses that caused a stir. Both, at least in part, are connected to an American named Michael Richardson.
The first involves former former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Harvard thesis on the Diaoyutai Islands. In 2009, Richard wrote an article, which no longer can be found, on a Boston website that was picked up by the local press.
In this case, the allegations weren’t of plagiarism, but rather of “sloppy scholarship.” According to the report, a “retired teacher” spent “a whole year” studying the document and found “more than 1,000 errors, including misspellings, missing words, grammatical problems and misattributed material and footnotes.”
In the end, Ma took only a little temporary political damage. However, in conversations for years after, people would from time to time reference it, so it appears it stuck in the back of people’s minds.
Tsai Ing-wen's "Thesis Gate"
That may be why when Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected president, her thesis drew attention. In fact, a vast conspiracy of allegations that continues to obsess a small army of people, and united the deep greens (like the Formosa Alliance) and the deep blues.
There are in fact two different sets of allegations against Tsai’s thesis. The far less emotive one claims that Tsai committed plagiarism…against herself.
In 2019, a largely unknown candidate for Taipei mayor and a TV pundit accused Tsai of having "dishonestly" translated her own 1983 Chinese-language text in a National Chengchi University publication into English for her LSE dissertation. This didn’t cause too much of a stir, and has largely faded.
The other is “Thesis Gate,” which initially came about because Tsai’s thesis for London University’s London School of Economics (LSE) was missing. It’s true, it was missing — a fact confirmed to me by a (pro-Tsai) lawyer who went looking for it in London, and LSE confirmed it.
This conspiracy started when commentator Cao Chang-qing (曹長青) posted on Facebook that it was questionable that it existed. This was hugely amplified when then famous former TV talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) jumped on the bandwagon, and then, in English, by the aforementioned Richardson.
After coming under pressure, LSE eventually produced a statement and the thesis (link here), and confirmed that President Tsai was indeed Dr. Tsai and was properly awarded her degree. Problem solved, right?
Well no. These true believers, especially people like Peng and Richardson, kept digging into it with the obsessive fanaticism that one associates with, well…conspiracies. Everything from the fonts used to the formatting were called into question, all to somehow “prove” it was fake.
The main problem comes down to why the thesis was missing in the first place. According to those who support “Thesis Gate,” apparently LSE risked its long-standing sterling reputation as one of the premier schools in the world to collude with an unknown Taiwanese daughter of a car repair shop owner destined for academia to fake her thesis, but give her a degree anyway.
This only makes sense if either time travel was involved or LSE could somehow see into the future and know that risking its reputation and engaging in unethical and possibly illegal activities would pay off for this one particular Taiwanese student. Of course, Tsai as president hasn’t actually done all that much for LSE … but then she does have two more years in office.
Or you can believe LSE’s explanation, which is that somewhere along the line since the early 1980s among gazillions of documents, it got misplaced. But 1980s bureaucratic inefficiency makes it hard to raise your fist and loudly call for the president to be deposed.
