TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), former mayor of Hsinchu City and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for mayor of Taoyuan, denied accusations of plagiarism in his master’s thesis on Sunday morning (July 24).
Speaking at a press conference at the DPP headquarters, Lin said, "I am original, there is no plagiarism," regarding the thesis he wrote while studying at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Graduate Institute of National Development (GIND) in 2013. Lin said he came up with the research topic first, under the guidance of Professor Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), an instructor at GIND and current director of the National Security Bureau, CNA reported.
Lin claimed he developed the research outline and research design first, and also completed the writing first. After the summer of 2015, he said he discussed the topic of his master's thesis, choosing to focus on the effects of political leveraging in the 2014 tight three-way Hsinchu mayoral election as the research objective.
Commenting on the alleged similarities between his and fellow NTU student Yu Cheng-huang’s (余正煌) thesis, Lin said that he and Yu had only met once at a banquet, but they did not know each other and had no contact. Lin said he provided relevant information to Yu out of goodwill.
After Lin resigned his position as mayor of Hsinchu City to run for mayor of Taoyuan City in the Nov. 26 elections, accusations surfaced that he plagiarized text and data for two theses, including a master’s thesis written for NTU’s GIND. NTU said on Wednesday (July 20) it had formed a special committee to investigate the allegations against Lin.
