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 in terms of the number of Internet users.There is little doubt that the Internet has changed and will continue to change various aspects of Chinese’s life profoundly.
The Internet has been successful in revealing misconduct and fraud related to science.A most 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 have been thought to be extinct. Upon having experts examine and confirm the authenticity of the photographs, the Shaanxi forestry bureau rewarded Zhou RMB20,000 yuan for finding the proof of the continuing existence of the highly endangered species.
However, the Internet became the place where Chinese overwhelmingly challenged the genuineness of the only digital picture of the 71 made available to the public. Having scrutinized the photograph from various perspectives, including photographic technologies, botany, zoology, and topography, the Chinese Internet users reached consensus that the tiger photo had been processed with Photoshop technologies before release.
But the Shaanxi forestry bureau had not bought into that for some 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 JiaotongUniversity 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 revealed on the Internet at first.This time, a whistle-blower from Chen’s group posted a message on an Internet bulletin board detailing how Chen had cheated his invention.For a while, the university where Chen worked and government agencies that had supported Chen all denied any wrongdoing involved.
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 JiaotongUniversity and stripped of his honors and privileges and it is said that the money put into the project was recovered.But Chen is so lucky that he has never been charged for anything, nor have any individuals from any government agency who also are lucky been sacked.
These cases show the power of the Internet.Given its reach and the number of its users, the Internet is probably a useful channel for ordinary Chinese citizens to have their voices heard by the leadership, at least as they hope.The Internet becomes a supplement to the imperfectness of the institutional mechanism.Although it is unknown why the above-mentioned cases had not been investigated at the first place, they must have got the attention of the leadership at certain level who prompted the investigation.
Those engaged in misconduct or fraud – scientific or others – would be careful.One never knows whether an online exposition may be picked up one day by President Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao, who happen to surfer the Internet.
