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Harvard doctorate affair in China

In June 2002 there was a nationwide media campaign in China: Over a period of three weeks an anti - America national newspaper, the China Youth Daily (hereinafter referred to as the Daily) published several front page articles, editorials, and opinions with slanderous allegations to smear the reputation of Dr. Lin Chen, a US -educated college president. A national sensation that's reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution about 40 years earlier, this smear propaganda campaign was called the "Harvard Doctorate Affair."

What Happened

In May 2002, Dr. Lin Chen returned to China to serve as  the president of a college in Shandong. As the first Harvard Ph.D. to return home in decades and the highest-paid college president, the news of his return and appointment became national headlines. In the following months, he was interviewed by TV and newspapers, talking about the Western educational philosophy, the Western university management models, and the current situation and prospects of China's higher education.

On June 26, the Daily published a front-page article, "Why do you believe he is a Harvard PhD?" (hereinafter, "Why"). The article claims that Chen's Harvard Ph.D. is fake because his purported mentor at Harvard, Robert C. Merton, denied ever having a student named Lin Chen. Lin Chen was immediately removed from the college president position on the ground of holding a fake Harvard degree.

The public was stunned. A week later, on July 3, another newspaper, the Beijing News, published a front-page article entitled "Proofs of the Harvard Doctorate" claiming that Chen's Harvard degree is real. The article reports that Prof. Merton confirmed that he supervised the doctoral research of Lin Chen, who received his Ph.D. in finance in 1994.

The public was once again stunned. Why did RC Merton make two different statements about Lin Chen? The answer is: the Daily's statement was false and was fabricated out of thin air by its journalist.

In a country with law and order, the journalists who commit such an unlawful act would be purged and banned from the media for life. However, the Daily did not suspend the reporter, but, on July 16, 2002, published another front -page article, "Cracking the Mystery of Lin Chen" (hereinafter, "Cracking") which she co-authored,  to escalate the assault on Dr. Chen. The main argument of "Cracking" is that although Lin Chen's Harvard degree is real, his bio is fraudulent.

In his bio it says, among others, that:  he TAed several masters courses while he was a doctoral student at Harvard; Tsinghua University invited him to be a guest professor while he visited and lectured at Tsinghua in1994;  he was under consideration for the position of Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of China in 2001;  he was helping Euromoney in London to enter the Chinese market in 2002, etc. The Daily said that they had investigated, and all of these claims were fake. The Daily also accused Lin Chen of not providing application materials such as recommendation letters to the college, and of Chen’s salary in Singapore was much lower than the salary he got in China.

The public was stunned for the third time. But this time it was the end of the Harvard Doctorate Affair. Although the public was still wondering  who was lying: were the Daily's allegations credible or were Dr. Chen's claims in his bio credible, the Daily refused to clarify with Lin Chen about their allegations, and other media/newspapers were blocked from following up to check on the Daily's allegations. The Daily's claims and allegations on Dr. Chen's bio became final.

The Daily's claims and allegations were full of lies and deceit, easy to refute with basic facts, common sense, and simple logic,  but in a country where the public lacks of critical and independent thinking capability, these bad words on a national newspaper were enough to destroy Dr. Chen's reputation and career.

Dr. Chen was "character assassinated". He has been unable to land a decent permanent job in China and has been living under a bad name for the past twenty years.

Chen  came back to the USA in 2020 and he has been trying to persuade journalists in China he got connected to on LinkedIn to publish his story, i.e., his rebuttal to the Daily's allegations. Some progress had been made, until he found that the messaging between journalists in China and him was censored. Possibly as a direct reaction to his effort, the Chinese cyber authority recently issued a directive urging Chinese journalists nationwide not to criticize their counterparts in other media.

Dr. Chen's attempt to tell his side of the story from overseas to the Chinese public has not been successful. Because of his endeavor, he is now under full digital surveillance by the Chinese cyber police: he is unable to message his connections in China;  his story that was sent to websites and social media in China was returned as "undeliverable"; all emails sent to friends and former colleagues in China were unanswered; and each and every one of his email accounts was hacked once in a while.

Being blocked in China, Dr. Chen is now reaching out to Western media for coverage of his story, his response to the Daily' s allegations. (A link to his story,

full version:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lin-chen-515a721a3_activity-6902958408702443520-m0do

Short version:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lin-chen-515a721a3_education-china-activity-6902031597999058944-JxAP )

Significance and Potential Impact

Dr. Chen's story not only tells his ordeal but also uncovers a new form of systematic human rights infringement by journalists in China: defaming certain individuals, silencing them and letting them perish. In these cases, the abusers are, surprisingly,  journalists. This role of journalists is unique under the Communist regime and largely unheard of by the general public.

The question is now how many people across China fell victims of China media's lies and brutality? Given the sheer number of journalists in China, there may be millions of victims. Therefore, his story would wake the public up to the crimes that journalists committed over time and would trigger a wordwide investigation into Chinese journalists' thuggish practice.

The Westerners may find that they can't believe Chinese journalists can be so evil and cruel. Dr. Chen' s case echoes the comment of Harvard Prof MacFarquhar on the Cultural Revolution in China: "The essence is that the Chinese, without direct orders, were so cruel to each other. They killed each other, fought each other, and tortured each other." Dr. Chen's ordeal  is the continuation of the Cultural Revolution.

Dr Chen's story began in 2002 and is still ongoing. Therefore the story is not outdated and remains current and relevant to the concerns about China's human rights situation. The Chinese authority is trying to block Western media from doing Dr. Chen's story because it may have a devastating effect on the image of Chinese journalists and the Chinese government. This also indicates, from another perspective, that Dr. Chen' s story is potentially impactful on China's politics.


 * References:
 * he Daily reports:
 * Why do you believe he is a Harvard PhD?
 * https://business.sohu.com/21/69/article201866921.shtml
 * https://business.sohu.com/88/39/article202163988.shtml )
 * The Beijing News' report:  Proofs of Harvard doctorate, mentioned in the news tip: http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia2/chenlin14.txt
 * https://business.sohu.com/88/39/article202163988.shtml )
 * The Beijing News' report:  Proofs of Harvard doctorate, mentioned in the news tip: http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia2/chenlin14.txt
 * The Beijing News' report:  Proofs of Harvard doctorate, mentioned in the news tip: http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia2/chenlin14.txt