After the DPP and the New Power Party demanded that the Ministry of Education halt the appointment process of the National Taiwan University (NTU) presidency—interfering in the personnel affairs of the Republic of China (R.O.C.)‘s most sacred institution of higher learning—DPP Legislator Chang-Liao Wan-chien held a press conference to raise an accusation:
He pointed out that “An Empirical Study on the Policy Effects of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) on International Trade,” co-published by Kuan Chung-ming and Chen Chien-liang (Dean of the College of Management at National Chi Nan University) last May, bore striking similarities to a July 2016 Master’s thesis by a student surnamed Chang. Chang-Liao noted over 20 identical passages and highlighted that the student was under Chen’s supervision. Based on this, Chang-Liao accused Kuan of plagiarism, and Liberty Times went so far as to publish this as a front-page headline without verification.
Almost simultaneously, several individuals with hidden agendas stepped forward, demanding that Kuan should maintain his integrity and voluntarily relinquish his position as the newly elected President of National Taiwan University.
🔎 Verification: A Total “Oolong” Case
However, academic researchers utilized the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan to discover that the electronic references in Chang’s thesis explicitly included a citation for the “Chen Chien-liang and Kuan Chung-ming (2016) ‘Policy Effect Evaluation of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA)’ Manuscript.” This proves that the student’s thesis content was, in fact, citing the work of Kuan and Chen, rather than the latter plagiarizing the former.
At the same time, Professor Chen Chien-liang stepped forward to clarify that Kuan’s paper was indeed not a result of plagiarism.