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“…the ethics of research demand that writers be credited for their work and their writing. Not to do so is to plagiarize…”* Today Chinese students comprise the largest overseas student population at most English speaking universities around the world. This is a positive thing and has lots of flow-on effects beyond the financial - though one nagging issue that requires attention is that of plagiarism. For several years now the issue has simmered, not just on foreign campuses but increasingly domestically with regards to foreign educators and their experience here marking papers and giving grades. At a broader level I feel the relationship between the pirating of goods, infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR) and plagiarism, the 3P’s, is linked, but for the sake of simplicity let’s limit our discussion here to the latter. Collectively many factors here encourage ‘rote-learning’ and mass regurgitation of facts and figures which impedes the fight against plagiarism. Teachers are under extreme pressure, usually over-worked, under-paid, dealing with huge class sizes and being driven by students’ parents and department heads to get students to pass key exams for highly coveted, limited places in key schools and universities. If you think the road to an Olympic Gold medal is tough, you should look at the path to a place in a top Chinese university. Particularly for students coming from the countryside or less developed cities, the competition is grueling and regrettably life-determining. | 
