A Shady Resume Sparks Debate Over Honesty in China. 1point3acres
By JESSIE JIANG / BEIJING Saturday, Jul. 31, 2010
.google и
Tang Jun, President of Newhuadu Industrial Group Co., Ltd., speaks
during a forum in Beijing on May 29, 2010. 1point3acres.com
Wang Zhou Bj / Imaginechina / AP
.google и
Tang Jun seemed to embody the ideal of a successful, globally minded
Chinese businessman. After leaving his post as president of . 1point3acres.com
Microsoft's China operation, he went on to help build a Chinese online
gaming empire and in 2008 landed a huge salary as the head of a
Chinese investment conglomerate. But it appears that the business
titan's academic achievements were significantly embellished — a fact
that doesn't seem to concern many of his Chinese fans but has . ----
nonetheless catalyzed a nationwide discussion on the place of .1point3acres
integrity in Chinese society.. 1point3acres
Earlier this month, Fang Shimin, a biologist-turned science writer who
has become famous in his own right for exposing academic frauds,
revealed on his micro-blog that Tang never earned a doctorate from the . 1point3acres
California Institute of Technology as he claimed in an early version
of his autobiography and various other occasions. Fang said that he
had checked the Caltech alumni list and an online doctoral
dissertation database, but had failed to locate Tang's name on either
one of them.
(See pictures of the making of modern China.)
Tang denied ever having made the claim, dismissing it as a
communication glitch between him and his book's publisher. Five days
after Fang's initial accusation, Tang told the China Daily that he
received his Ph.D. at the California-based Pacific Western University,
a school that Fang later pointed out was categorized as a diploma mill
by a 2004 United States General Accounting Office report, and was not
acknowledged by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Tang has yet to
respond to that allegation, but has since been quoted by a Chinese
magazine saying, "If your sincerity fools everyone, then it's a skill
and a sign of success.". check 1point3acres for more.
Diploma frauds are hardly unheard of in Chinese business culture. In
2001, Richard Li, a Hong Kong-based Internet tycoon, was exposed as . Waral dи,
having never graduated from Stanford University even though he had
claimed to own a degree from that prestigious campus. Later that year, . ----
Wu Zheng, a co-chairman of the biggest Chinese-language web portal, ..
went through a similar embarrassment when he was found to have
received his Ph.D. from an unaccredited school in the U.S.
Tang's scandal has triggered an avalanche of mixed reactions and . 1point3acres
debates this month in the Chinese blogosphere that boil down to how . ----
honesty is valued in society. Indignant netizens have called for Tang
to apologize and resign as chief executive of the New Huadu Industrial
Group, a Chinese investment corporation that owns companies listed on
both mainland China and Hong Kong stock markets. But Tang's many
supporters argue for tolerance, holding "a diploma-oriented society" . From 1point 3acres bbs
more responsible for this phenomenon than fraudulent individuals.
"Tang Jun is a talented person after all," wrote an Internet user.
"Why should we dwell so much on his diploma?"
(Watch a video about China's knockoff electric carmakers.).
That attitude has critics up in arms. "The fact that so many people
are apathetic [to the scandal] or sympathizing with Tang reflects the
moral corruption of our society as a whole," says Ge Jianxiong,
professor of history at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Trust is
practically nonexistent [in this society]."
Still, for now, the two camps are about an even split. According to a . 1point3acres.com
recent online survey conducted by a Beijing-based market research
company, 45.5% of the 3,500 participants believed that Tang's alleged
misconduct, if true, should be "treated with tolerance." The same
percentage of people viewed "ability" as the most important aspect of
a person, while nearly as many respondents picked "honesty.". Χ
In an e-mail response to TIME, Fang says he expected Tang would just
ignore the accusation, because that was the reaction he had got when
exposing other big shots. "In today's China, honesty is not only
unacknowledged but often regarded as stupidity," he says. "I know many . check 1point3acres for more.
Chinese think Americans are naive and easily fooled."
It is hard to gauge how much Tang has benefited, if at all, from the
academic credentials he claimed to possess. Born in 1962, Tang was . .и
hired by Microsoft in 1994 as a senior manager and was promoted to
president of Microsoft China in 2002. Two years later, he joined .
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, a Shanghai-based online
gaming company that became listed on NASDAQ in May 2004. Tang's latest
move to New Huadu gained national attention as he reportedly brokered
an annual salary package worth $146 million in company stock shares.
Over the years, Tang has emerged as a household name in China as he
frequented TV talk shows and university podiums, sharing
rags-to-riches stories with audiences often gripped with admiration. . ----
His autobiography, titled My Success Can Be Replicated, has been
reprinted five times since its release in 2008.
It has been weeks since the accusations against Tang first caught the
public's eye, and yet the dust is far from settling. An independent
director with New Huadu said that he would investigate the matter as
soon as possible, but no official decision has been reached by the
company so far. No matter what the result, Fudan University's Ge
believes that the widespread problem of academic fraud will take much
more than individual whistleblowers like Fang to solve. "I don't see
how trust can be restored without an entirely different social belief . 1point3acres
system," he says. "I'm not optimistic about it at all.". 1point3acres
2# Warald
I really wanna know how he got the green card providing that his doctorate was from such a low ranking institution...
cathyliu 发表于 2010-8-5 12:23