Law school dean mired in plagiarism scandal

On Saturday, "fraud fighter" Fang Zhouzi exposed on his microblog that Xiao Yongping, dean of Wuhan University School of Law, plagiarized a scholarly work. On Sunday, Xiao said the question of plagiarism should be evaluated by professionals in his field, the Changjiang Daily reported.　

Xiao allegedly plagiarized from Private International Law at the End of the 20th Century: Progress or Regress? by Simon Symeonides, a professor at Willamette University College of Law in the US. Fang said that Xiao translated part of the work into Chinese and published it as an article in the Chinese Journal of Law in 2001. The original work by Symeonides was later translated into Chinese and published in the journal Civil and Commercial Law in 2002.

Xiao told reporters Sunday that the article in question was based on more than 20 documents and that his colleagues should be the judge of its authenticity. While he admitted that his paper shared similar themes with that of Symeonides' he said he could not clearly list any differences.