Xayaburi Dam: How Laos Violated the 1995 Mekong Agreement

Sun, 01/13/2013 - 8:45pm

By: Kirk Herbertson

 

 On November 7, 2012, Laos officially began construction on the controversial Xayaburi Hydropower Project, the first mainstream dam proposed for the Lower Mekong River. The process has not gone smoothly. Construction activities began almost two years before the official announcement. Vietnam and Cambodia called for a delay in construction because concerns over the dam’s transboundary impacts remained unresolved. Laos never conducted a comprehensive analysis of the transboundary impacts, instead insisting that the dam was engineered to be environmentally sustainable. The Mekong River Commission’s (MRC) Secretariat disagreed with many of Laos’ claims, but its advice went unheeded. Although the dam is going forward, its risks remain unknown.

The Xayaburi Dam was the first significant test for the Mekong Agreement, a treaty signed in 1995 by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. The treaty is intended to promote shared use and management of the river basin. Instead of cooperating with neighboring governments, however, Laos began implementing the Xayaburi Dam while Cambodia and Vietnam voiced concerns about the project’s transboundary impacts. Thailand remained silent through much of the dispute, but quietly financed the project and agreed to purchase its electricity. By November 2012, Laos’ and Thailand’s implementation of the project had advanced so far that Cambodia and Vietnam had little leverage left to raise concerns.

Laos insists that the Xayaburi Dam complies with the 1995 Mekong Agreement. Few others have questioned this claim.

In a new report, we examine the requirements of the Mekong Agreement in closer detail. On its surface, the text of the Agreement is often ambiguous. In an effort to seek greater clarity, we examine the requirements of the Mekong Agreement in its entirety. We also examine: (i) the historical record of the negotiations that describes what the parties intended when they drafted the Agreement; and (ii) international law that describes the meaning of the words that were carefully placed in the Agreement. In doing so, a clearer picture of the Mekong Agreement emerges. We find that Laos has misinterpreted the Mekong Agreement and failed to comply with several of its key requirements.

The full report is available below, but key findings are summarized here.

Laos is required to seek agreement with its neighbors before beginning the project.

To balance the rights of upstream and downstream countries, the Mekong Agreement requires all four governments to make a “good faith” effort to reach agreement on whether a project goes forward. Instead of trying to reach agreement on the Xayaburi Dam, Laos claimed that it only must consider comments of the other governments. Laos made no efforts to compromise on its position or to reach a mutually agreeable solution.

Laos must provide other governments with opportunity to evaluate the project’s impacts.

The MRC’s “prior consultation” is the process where the four governments try to reach an agreement. The primary purpose of the prior consultation is to provide the governments with an opportunity to evaluate the project’s transboundary impacts. Yet for the Xayaburi Dam, Laos did not provide neighboring governments with an opportunity to evaluate the project’s transboundary impacts. In particular, Laos did not assess the transboundary impacts before starting the prior consultation in September 2010.

Laos is not permitted to implement the project while consultations are still underway.

International law and the Mekong Agreement prohibit the governments from implementing a project while the governments are still discussing it—this is part of the obligation to negotiate “in good faith.” Laos and developer Ch. Karnchang began implementing the Xayaburi Dam in late 2010 before the Mekong governments even met to discuss the project. Later, Laos incorrectly claimed that “preparatory work” was allowed under the Mekong Agreement while the consultations are underway.

Laos is required to study the project’s transboundary impacts before consultation can take place.

Under international law, governments are required to prevent significant harm to other countries, which includes setting aside enough time to assess the project’s transboundary impacts. After failing to assess the Xayaburi Dam's transboundary impacts in 2010, Laos refused to delay project implementation after Cambodia and Vietnam requested these studies during the prior consultation. Instead, Laos claimed that untested technologies proposed by consulting company Pöyry were sufficient to mitigate any harm.

Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand have a right to extend the prior consultation’s timeframe.

The default timeframe for the prior consultation is six months, but under international law the downstream governments have a right to extend it. Laos claims that the Xayaburi Dam's prior consultation ended automatically after six months. During this initial six month period, Laos failed to provide the information that other governments needed to evaluate the project’s impacts. This undermined the primary purpose of the prior consultation. Laos also began project implementation during this initial period.

Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam have a right to seek compensation for any harm caused.

Laos has an obligation under international law to stop the project immediately if it causes harm to neighboring countries. Downstream governments Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam can seek compensation for any harm that the dam causes. Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam will have difficulty seeking compensation, however, because there is insufficient baseline data at this time to measure how the Xayaburi Dam will change the Mekong River. All three countries now face the difficult task of closely monitoring the impacts caused by the dam.
The Xayaburi Dam has set a dangerous precedent that could undermine future cooperation. In 2013, work might advance on two other Mekong mainstream dams—the Don Sahong and the Pak Beng Dams. Unless reforms are made quickly, disagreements over the Mekong dams could escalate into a conflict with serious economic and political implications.

Attached files: 

 

Click here to download the full report

More information: 

 

• Please visit our Xayaburi Dam webpage for more information.

Cambodian economy expected to grow 7 pct in 2013: official

Xinhua | 2013-1-14 13:02:20
By Agencies

Cambodia's GDP is projected to grow by 7 percent this year even though the global economy remains fragile and high risk due to persisting sovereign debt crisis in Europe and sluggish economic recovery in the United States, a commerce official said Monday.

"Through Cambodian government's deep reforms, Cambodia's economic growth has rapidly recovered from the global economic crisis and it has maintained annual growth of 7 percent last year and the same rate is expected this year," Ou Proum Virak, deputy director of the Commerce Ministry's Trade Promotion Department, said in a trade seminar.

He said the growth would come mainly from garment exports, tourism, agriculture and construction.

Meanwhile, he said global economy at the end of 2012 and in 2013 still faces high risks amid lingering sovereign debt issue in Europe and slow recovery of the US economy.

"These could be challenges for Cambodia either to increase external businesses or to attract foreign investment," he said.

Last Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that Cambodia is expected to register an economic growth rate of 6. 7 percent this year.

"A fragile global economic outlook, rapid credit growth, and potentially extreme weather conditions continue to pose significant risks," the IMF cautioned in the annual review of Cambodia's economic and financial conditions.

A symbol of Cambodia - Angkor Wat -

http://www.china.org.cn/travel/2013-01/14/content_27679522.htm

 Angkor Wat, a Hindu temple complex, was built in the early 12th century. As the most famous and best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation - first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. Angkor Wat is on UNESCO's culture heritage list and has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag. [by sunway111/bbs.fengniao]

China eyes natural resources in Cambodia

The Irish Times - Tuesday, January 8, 2013

CLIFFORD COONAN

China’s influence in Asia is sure to keep growing in 2013, and two Chinese companies have set out their stall early, signing an €8.6 billion deal to build a new railway, port and steel mill in Cambodia.

As with investments in Africa, accessing natural resources is a big part of the motivation behind the spending.
China Rail Group will co-operate with Chinese-owned Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry, to jointly build a 404km railway from Preah Vihear province to Koh Kong province in the southwest.
They will also build a seaport in Koh Kong to support the metal mining industry in Preah Vihear. A spokesman told local media construction should begin by July.

Chinese companies have invested heavily in Cambodia over the last 10 years in projects ranging from hydroelectric dams to agriculture.

Late last month, the Cambodian government gave the green light to construction of its first oil refinery. Sinomach China Perfect Machinery Industry Corp was given the go-ahead to invest €1.77 billion.

Cambodia: Open Letter to Prime Minister Mr. Hun Sen: Concern over the end of year crackdown against human rights defenders

OPEN LETTER - THE OBSERVATORY

CAMBODIA: OPEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER MR. HUN SEN

            Geneva-Paris, January 8, 2013

Re: Concern over the end of year crackdown against human rights defenders

Your Excellency,

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), expresses its deep concern about court decisions in late December 2012 that led to the wrongful sentencing of two prominent land and housing rights defenders and continued pattern of impunity in the high-profile murder of a trade union leader. The Observatory fears that such decisions were adopted during that time of year to avoid scrutiny by the international community and the media.

On December 26 and 27, 2012, Phnom Penh’s Municipal Court sentenced Ms. Tim Sakmony and Ms. Yorm Bopha, two prominent land and housing rights defenders, to prison terms. Ms. Sakmony was found guilty of “making a false declaration” - a charge totally unsupported by the facts of her case - and received a suspended six-months sentence for time already served. Ms. Bopha was sentenced to three years in prison for “intentional violence”, on the basis of questionable allegations, and despite the fact that no credible evidence was presented at her trial. After the verdict, Ms. Bopha was returned to Prey Sar Prison's Correctional Center 2 to serve her sentence.

The Observatory recalls that Ms. Yorm Bopha and Ms. Tim Sakmony were detained since September 4 and 5, respectively. Ms. Yorm Bopha, a pivotal figure in the protests against forced evictions in the Boeung Kak area of Phnom Penh, was detained for allegedly assaulting a person suspected of theft. Ms. Tim Sakmony, a leader in protests against forced evictions from the Borei Keila area of the capital, was arrested after the owner of land developer Phanimex lodged a complaint alleging that she had made a “false declaration” in a suit accusing Phanimex of inadequate compensation for persons evicted from land the company is developing.

In a separate case, on December 27, 2012, the Court of Appeals upheld the original sentence of 20 years in prison for Messrs. Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, who were convicted for the high-profile killing of trade union leader Chea Vichea in 2004. It is widely acknowledged that their original convictions were based on coerced confessions and plagued by political interference, intimidation of witnesses, and other violations of international standards, which led to the decision by the Supreme Court to release both men from prison in December 2008. The Supreme Court also ordered a new trial by the Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals finally retried the pair on November 7, 2012, in a swift hearing that was marred with irregularities and offered absolutely no new evidence of the defendants' guilt. Despite overwhelming evidence of the innocence of the two men, the Court announced that they were guilty on December 27. The two were immediately arrested and sent to serve the remainder of their sentences at Prey Sar Prison’s Correctional Center 1 in Phnom Penh. The Observatory fears that this parody of justice merely aims at protecting the real perpetrators of the murder of Mr. Chea Vichea.

The Observatory is deeply concerned about these new examples of political pressure being used to influence Cambodian's courts. Likewise, Mr. Mam Sonando, Director and owner of the independent FM station 105 (Beehive Radio) and President of the non-governmental organisation Democrats' Association, remains detained after the Court of Appeal in Phnom Penh refused to release him on bail pending his appeal. An outspoken critic of the Government's human rights record, including serious and systematic violations of land and housing rights, Mr. Sonando was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 10 million riels on October 1, 2012.

Accordingly, the Observatory calls upon the Cambodian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Ms. Yorm Bopha and Messrs. Born Samnang, Sok Sam Oeun and Mam Sonando, and to put an end to the judicial harassment against them.

The authorities should also put an end to the judicial harassment of Mr. Chan Soveth, Senior Investigator and Deputy Head of the Monitoring Section for the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC) - who was first summoned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in August 2012 to answer questions in relation to his human rights work. The hearing was delayed, and on December 24, 2012, Mr. Chan Soveth appeared before Phnom Penh Municipal Court's Investigating Judge. He was not charged, but the case remains pending.

The past year saw an increase in arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, judicial harassment of defenders, and even the killing of key activists with impunity, as recently recalled in a report published on December 10, 2012 by the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO). The Observatory thus reiterates its call to the Cambodian authorities to put an end to any act of harassment against human rights defenders in Cambodia, in compliance with the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights treaties ratified by Cambodia.

We express our sincere hope that you will take these considerations and requests into account.

Yours sincerely,

Souhayr Belhassen FIDH President

Gerald Staberock OMCT Secretary General

Thailand: PAD asks Govt not to accept ICJ ruling

• Published: 8/01/2013 at 02:23 PM
• Online news: 

The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has formally submitted a seven-point proposal for the government not to accept the International Court of Justice's(ICJ) pending ruling over the Thai-Cambodian border dispute.

The proposal was submitted by Panthep Puapongpan, a PAD core member, to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
In the first point of the proposal, the PAD asked the government to officially declare that the ICJ does not have the jurisdiction to interpret the 1962 judgement, which awarded ownership of the Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia but left the 4.6 sq km area surrounding it in dispute.
The ICJ has scheduled for both countries to present an oral statement from April 15 to 19. The ruling is expected to be made in October.

The other points in the proposal are as follows:

- Following the declaration, Thailand would subsequently not be duty-bound to comply with the ICJ's injunction.  It would not have to withdraw troops or police from the disputed area, but push a Cambodian community out of the Thai soil.

- Thailand should then develop relationship particularly with countries which are members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to make sure that its territorial sovereignty would not be be infringed on.

- The Thai government must reiterate that other UN members cannot interfere in Thailand's internal affairs, citing  provisions in the UN Charter.

- Thailand must not return to be a member of Unesco's World Heritage Convention.

- The government should stop the Foreign Ministry's plan to hire academics with a budget of 7.1 million baht to campaign on state media for the Thai people to accept the ICJ's ruling, even if it could mean a loss of territory to Cambodia.

- The government should take action to expedite the release of Veera Somkwamkid and Ratree Pipattanapaiboon, members of the Thai Patriots Network, who have been imprisoned in Cambodia for alleged spying and border encroachment.

Mr Panthep said the PAD would consider taking action, which might be a mass rally, if the government did not respond to the proposal.

UNITED KINGDOM: University applications down

Guardian06 January 2013 Issue No:253

 

 The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) has expressed concern about the potential impact of tuition fees, after figures showed a drop of more than 6% in student applications with less than a month to go before the deadline for 2013 applications, writes Peter Walker for the Guardian.

Data from UCAS showed there were 265,784 university applications by UK-based candidates up to 17 December, 6.3% down on the parallel period in the admissions cycle the year before. While this is less than the 8.4% year-on-year fall seen in earlier UCAS figures, the looming January deadline makes it ever more likely that the total 2013 applicant figure will see a second sizeable fall following the introduction of annual fees of up to £9,000 (US$14,600).

A breakdown of the UCAS figures to mid-December shows a 6.5% fall for applicants in England and 11.7% for those in Wales, with smaller drops of 3.9% and 0.5% for Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.

Full report on the Guardian site

UNITED STATES: Ratings at a price for smaller universities

The New York Times06 January 2013 Issue No:253

 

For a certain kind of European, Asian or Latin American institution, the release of the world university rankings each autumn is an exercise in humiliation. Though often long established, and with good local reputations, these schools lack the endowments, research facilities and sheer size needed to compete with US and British powerhouses like Harvard, MIT, Cambridge and Stanford, writes DD Guttenplan for The New York Times.

So when Quacquarelli Symonds, the London-based company behind the QS World University Rankings, announced “a new initiative that gives universities the opportunity to highlight their strength” by paying a fee for the chance to be rated on a scale of one to five stars, the business case was obvious. But so, say critics, was the potential for conflicts of interest. The fees had already been announced in 2010, but the initiative was not introduced fully until this year.

Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, which oversees both the ratings and the rankings, said there was no favouritism in QS’s system. “Just because accreditation agencies charge the universities, that doesn’t mean they are biased,” he said.

Full report on The New York Times site
 

GLOBAL: A focus on skills increasingly links higher education with employment

Yojana Sharma06 January 2013 Issue No:253

 

The attention of education policy-makers and the international education community is moving away from raising literacy levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education, towards skills required by the workforce to promote economic growth.

This became increasingly evident during the past year in the richest countries. Recognition of the issue is also growing in emerging economies and middle-income countries, and is likely to be a major debate in developing nations as discussion on what should succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) takes centre stage in the next two years.

Higher education experts say that universities are coming under increasing pressure to ensure that their graduates are ‘employable’, although preparation for ‘employability’ is still only rarely incorporated in university courses, and the skills that could make a difference in finding employment and ways to deliver those skills are still not evident.

“There is growing awareness of the need to link education to employment,” said Nicholas Burnett, managing director of the Results for Development Institute in Washington, DC, and a former assistant director general for education at UNESCO where he was head of the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report.

“The global recession or slowdown is provoking a reaction that there may be a problem on the supply side – that you’ve got all this unemployment because people don’t have the right skills,” said Burnett.

Deborah Roseveare, head of the Skills Beyond Schools Division of the OECD’s Education Directorate in Paris, said there was a shift towards looking at skills and their effective utilisation.

In richer countries, demographics change as more workers retire, and economic restructuring as workers become displaced by technology and globalisation, mean that “it is difficult to get back to [the stage] where the skillset can be used”, said Roseveare.

“Moving forward, we are working with individual countries on how they can improve skills,” she told University World News, “it is not just about a better match of skills and jobs but what kind of economic environment is needed to achieve a more high-skilled equilibrium.”

Major reports

A raft of major reports from international and regional organisations published in the second half of 2012 have referred to the skills agenda, with November’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report from UNESCO focused on youth and skills, and the World Bank’s just-published World Development Report 2013 focused on jobs.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) released its report Improving Transitions from School to University to Workplace in November. And in the Arab World a large number of reports on education and unemployment followed the Arab Spring of 2011.

Jouko Sarvi, ADB’s education practice leader, said at the ADB report’s launch: “In addition to improving quality of higher education, an increase in attention is needed to improve relevance of higher education.”

“Higher education systems and institutions are under pressure to reform to provide adequate skills and knowledge for the evolving labour markets. This is increasingly important in countries which are moving towards middle-income country status and aspiring to become knowledge economies, increasing the demand for higher skills.”

Gerard Postiglione, a professor of education at Hong Kong University and a contributor to the ADB report, notes that higher education expanded rapidly in Asia; and when this happens misalignment with workplace needs grows. “The consequence of poor alignment is rising unemployment,” he told University World News.

Supply-side focus

But Postiglione also suggests there may be too much focus in Asia and internationally on the supply-side problem, or students and graduates. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution to aligning it with demand. “Each country has to look at each part of the labour market that is taking off,” he said.

Few of the experts in the many reports released recently are suggesting a reduction in the number of graduates being produced.

Instead, higher education must diversify, according to Postiglione, to provide the right mix of more vocational skills that serve the labour market, and higher-end research and science graduates that can fuel innovation for economic growth.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company dissects the reasons behind what it calls the “twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills” in its report, Education to Employment: Designing a system that works, released late last year.

The McKinsey report suggests companies should become more involved in devising university courses to make graduates more employable.

But it also suggests that the shortage of employment opportunities is compounded by a lack of workplace training in the nine countries studied in the McKinsey report, including India, Turkey and Brazil.

The OECD also talks about teaching transferable skills and says education is “more effective” if learning and the world of working are “better integrated”.

Examples of such integration are still few and far between. When asked what “skills” they are looking for, companies tend to point to more generic, soft skills, such as communication and teamwork.

“The question is how do we know if society and its workforce as a whole have the level or mix of soft skills to function properly?” said Postiglione.

Developing countries

Major global initiatives to increase education participation in developing countries, such as the MDGs and EFA, have also seen a shift in thinking.

“In the past the focus was still on enrolment; now it is more on skills in both secondary and higher education,” said Burnett. The future agenda of the MDGs and EFA, post-2015, “will surely have things to do with economic growth and employment”.

UNESCO’s release in May of the UN system task team report on Education and Skills for Inclusive and Sustainable Development beyond 2015 notes that, “the most recent developments in the knowledge society and the subsequent changes in the world of work at the global level are raising skill/qualifications requirements for job entry and subsequently demand for a more knowledgeable and skilled workforce”.

This suggests a continued need for higher-qualified workers in developing countries.

But “in the past the focus was on delivering education; now it is on learning outcomes", according to Andreas Schleicher, advisor on education to the OECD secretary general, pointing out that now “accumulating knowledge matters a lot less”.

Much of that knowledge, Schleicher noted in a speech at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), in Doha, Qatar in early November, can be googled.

But “without the right skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress doesn’t translate into economic growth, and countries can’t compete in today’s economies”, said Schleicher.

More education is not enough

However, at a time when university enrolments have been rising around the world, Schleicher also noted that “more education doesn’t automatically translate into better skills and better lives”.

OECD Secretary General Ángel Gurría pointed out that in Egypt last year 1.5 million young people were unemployed, at the same time as 600,000 vacancies couldn’t be filled.

And the McKinsey report found that 53% of Indian employers were unable to fill entry-level vacancies mainly because new graduates lacked the right skills.

The European Commission in Brussels noted that while the European Union youth unemployment rate is close to 23%, some two million job vacancies cannot be filled.

“Europe needs a radical rethink on how education and training systems can deliver the skills needed by the labour market,” according to the Commission in its Rethinking Education strategy in November, intended “to encourage member states to take immediate action to ensure that young people develop the skills and competences needed by the labour market”.

“To unlock the full potential of education as a driver for growth and jobs, member states must pursue reforms to boost both the performance and efficiency of their education systems,” according to the European Commission.

But while the problem has been widely identified in all of these reports, concrete solutions are harder to come by. “As difficult as it is to figure out what skills matter, it is harder to figure out what this means for the design of education systems,” Schleicher admitted at WISE.

“We need to understand those skills that actually make a difference. We need to deliver those skills in much more effective and equitable ways,” said Schleicher.

But with a constantly shifting work environment, the skills that can “make a difference” are hard to pin down. “Perhaps the most important skill in the 21st century is to be adaptable,” suggested Postiglione.

CHINA: New academic misconduct laws may not be adequate to curb cheating

Yojana Sharma12 August 2012 Issue No:234

 

New laws to clamp down on academic cheating at China’s universities could come into effect later this year as the rampant problems of plagiarism, falsification, lying about credentials and research papers and other misconduct continue unabated in higher education.

But some experts say the measure will not be adequate to curb cheating, and others dismissed the release in March of the regulations for public consultation as a government ploy to placate a restive public that something is being done about misconduct. The consultation ends on 16 August.

Under the draft regulation to “effectively prevent and curb academic misconduct” in higher education, students and doctoral candidates will be disqualified if they are found to have committed plagiarism or fraud.

Degrees that have already been awarded will be revoked if misconduct is found to have occurred, and transgressors could face a ban on obtaining other degrees for three years.

The Ministry of Education released the draft law after China’s universities failed to crack down on plagiarism, despite being deemed responsible by the ministry for investigating and dealing with cheating.

The government is also concerned that the proliferation of cases is affecting the global reputation of China’s universities and research.

Shortly before the draft was released Yan Xijun, a deputy of the National People’s Congress, was quoted in official media as saying that “academic misconduct seriously impacts on the social credibility of scientific research and provides a hotbed for corruption.

“Academic cheating has widened from academic papers to the high-tech fields, which not only involves young students but also senior experts,” said Yan.

Problem of compliance

Yan said: “Although lots of measures have been carried out to enhance academic ethics, it is still [too] weak to curb academic dishonesty. Laws and regulations are needed to standardise academic fraud and a public supervision system is needed as well as an investigation department.”

However, Cao Xinglong, an assistant associate professor in the school of law at City College of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, said: “These so-called new laws are really not new. Similar laws have appeared in many regulations of the [Education] Ministry, but the ministry had little intention of carrying them out.”

Rather than issuing new laws, the government needed to ensure compliance, Cao told University World News. Instead, academia largely polices itself and the law plays little or no role.

Even top universities have been reluctant to act, although plagiarism and falsified data are clearly a problem, according to professors who have spoken out in recent years.

Punishments set out

The latest draft regulations set out punishments to be meted out, but do not define what constitutes plagiarism or fraud. For example, the State Council (roughly equivalent to cabinet) or provincial academic degree committees can revoke universities’ rights to grant degrees if multiple academic fraud cases are found.

Supervising professors of students who commit fraud can be suspended or removed from their posts.

The new regulations said institutions must “supervise original experiment data” and set up an independent investigation body to identify fraudulent activity, although not all powers will be in the university’s hands. “The legitimate rights of those suspected of academic wrongdoing should be protected,” according to the draft.

Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was quoted in Chinese media as saying administrative punishment was not enough to root out rampant plagiarism and other misconduct. “To standardise academic norms is more important,” Xiong said.

New areas of fraud emerging

For example, there are areas that can be hard to pin down. Last month an international journal, Experimental Parasitology, retracted an article by He Guangzhi of Guiyang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The alarm was raised only because the email addresses provided for supposed peer reviewers appeared to be false.

The publisher, Elsevier, said in a retraction notice that it had launched a “full investigation” of the author and his published and ‘in review’ papers. “From this the extent of the fraud was determined.”

Moreover, more instances are coming to light where researchers or doctoral students in China have simply ‘lifted’ laboratory findings and published them as their own, before those who actually did the work could do so, according to other retraction notices issued this year by international journals.

Other high-profile cases have been revealed by Fang Shimin, an outspoken campaigner against academic misconduct, who highlights cases on the micro-blogging site Sina Weibo under his pseudonym Fang Zhouzi.

Fang has noted that a minuscule number of cases of academic corruption result in any kind of punishment, and most of these involve students rather than academics.

High-profile dismissals

In one highly publicised case, Xiamen University dismissed Fu Jin, a professor in its medical college who claimed to have a pharmacology degree from Columbia University but was found to have forged the qualification.

In another recent case Jun Lu, an assistant professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology, was fired after he attempted to pass off as his own several articles in top English-language journals as well as postdoctoral experience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology by an academic of the same name now at Yale University, the Shanghai Daily and the Beijing Times reported at the end of July.

But such sackings are unusual. And the two cases were revealed by Fang through his dogged investigations, rather than through university or ministry investigations.

The timing of the new regulations may be significant. Cao said that with a politically charged atmosphere in the country at present, “common people in China realise that academic misconduct is a part of the corruption of political activities – many academics are politically appointed”.

He added that the timing of the regulations was an attempt by the ministry to show that academic misconduct was a problem for universities to tackle rather than to do with government inaction or ‘government delinquency’.

Government-led anti-corruption campaigns are common at times of public dissatisfaction against the authorities, often as a way of appeasing the public and assuring them that problems are being dealt with, China experts said.