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2010-05-28

Optimality in valuing individuals and community, as well as referencing and substance

Second and third comments on Peter Friedman “Plagiarism and China’s future economic development”, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/05/26/plagiarism-and-chinas-future-economic-development/

It would make the points of my earlier clear by stating the following:

1. There is a difference in terms of the weights given to individuals and community/nation between East Asian countries and the mainstream western countries. There may be a case of optimal weighting, although even optimal weighting may mean different weighting in different countries.

2. There are both tendances of under-referencing and over-referencing in the world.

3. Under-referencing has the danger of under valuing the sources and plagiarism.

4. Over-referencing has the danger of referencing for referencing sake and using referencing rather than own creativity to shore up a paper, document and etc. That is to say, some papers or documents may not have their own real substance, but use impressive references as a cover for poor quality.

5. Again, there may be a case for optimal referencing. Yet again, optimal referencing may vary between countries, even professions.

An important point that I left out just a moment ago is that Peter Friedman may have inadvertently created an undesirable and wrong impression that the Chinese don't value property rights especially intellectual ones and plagiarism is deemed as the right thing by the Chinese.

Clearly that is not the case in China and the absolute majority despise plagiarism.

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