Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan mayoral candidate Simon Chang (張善政) yesterday said he had legitimately referenced a research paper published by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) when writing research reports for the Council of Agriculture (COA).
Chang has been accused of plagiarizing the council’s own reports, as well as other sources, for a COA research project that ran from 2007 to 2009. He was working as vice president at Acer Inc at the time.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday reported that much of the content in a 60-page sub-report on the research project was allegedly copied from a report published by ITRI in 2006, involving a study that the institute was tasked to conduct by the National Communications Commission (NCC).
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The purpose of the COA project was to study the trend of digitization in the agriculture industry at home and overseas. The NCC happened to publish a report relevant to the topic,” Chang told reporters after attending a radio program.
“We cited the ITRI report in accordance with articles 50 and 52 of the Copyright Act (著作權法). It was a legal use of the report, not plagiarism,” he added.
Chang said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should not use double standards to judge his work.
Photo: CNA
“I have nothing to hide. The Council of Agriculture should not have accepted our report if it was found to be problematic. Our report was accepted following an evaluation by experts recruited by the council when former legislative speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) was the COA minister,” he added.
Chang said he is consulting lawyers about suing DPP Taoyuan mayoral candidate Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) and the DPP itself for spreading false allegations about him.
Cheng Yun-peng said on the sidelines of a ceremony in Taoyuan’s Yungan Fishing Harbor that Chang should come clean about the report, instead of giving media interviews and consulting lawyers.
“Chang should explain to the public whether he copied information from the COA and ITRI, as well as sources from China, the US and Japan, for the report without citing them,” he said.
“Chang has been arrogant in the face of the allegations and does not seem to understand that Taoyuan residents have a right to know the truth. What residents have seen is Chang offering baseless criticisms of the city government and showing no remorse for a scandal in which he is involved.”
The government funding for the COA research project — NT$57.36 million (US$1.88 million at the current exchange rate) — might be a small amount for Chang, but it is taxpayers’ money, Cheng Yun-peng said.
COA spokesperson Chen Shu-rong (陳淑蓉) said that the report, which was published 2009, is no longer confidential and can be viewed by the public.
“We will gather any tip-offs and examine the report,” she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods