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In recent years, in order to improve the overall quality of college students, many colleges and universities have adopted the comprehensive assessment rankings as the basis for evaluating excellence, awards and scholarships, and even the qualifications for graduate school, and its importance is becoming more and more prominent. The investigation found that some organizations take this “business opportunity” to organize low-quality, loose contests, which are called “water contests” in the industry, and participants can win prizes with only a small registration fee and a simple work, and some of the organizations also sell certificates directly.

Accordingly, Mr. Ge Youshan, the executive director/founding partner of JAVY law firm, was interviewed by Rule of Law Daily to explain such events.

01 fraudulent violation of the competition Patent rights become the object of sale and purchase

There is a phenomenon on an app that the same organizer has held many “high profile” international competitions that are not related to the direction of the organizer. By calling the unit to consult on a competition, the staff introduced the competition's winning rate of more than 75%, the registration site has an exclusive pre-examination question bank, the original question in more than 60%, “not only to run the competition at a high level, but also very easy to win”.

There are some competitions to engage in a parody, organized by the event and the regular competition only a word difference, if not carefully identify, it is likely to recognize the wrong. Public information shows that a Beijing education and culture limited company was informed by the ministry of education, and its famous tournament is very similar to the series of events for the violation of the competition.

In the opinion of lawyer Ge Youshan, the organizer of the cottage tournament may need to bear administrative responsibility, civil liability and even criminal liability. Events organized by cottage associations for profit-making purposes may be seriously investigated by administrative and regulatory authorities, such as imposing administrative penalties such as fines or revocation of business licenses. Cottage events that are similar to regular events in terms of event name and branding, thus leading to public misrecognition, may be suspected of violating the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and constituting unfair competition, and will be subject to corresponding civil liabilities, such as compensation for damages and cessation of infringement.

“Excessive publicity to attract students to participate may be regarded as false advertising. If these certificates do not actually have the corresponding value and authority, but make the public mistakenly believe that they represent high level or authoritative external qualifications, they need to bear the corresponding responsibility.” Lawyer Ge Youshan said that if unfair business competition is carried out through false advertising or unfair means, or if a certain scale of fund-raising and fraudulent activities are formed, etc., they may also violate the criminal law of fraud and illegal business operation, and if the circumstances are serious, they will be held criminally liable.

02 Regularly update the list of competitions and severely punish academic misconduct

In 2003, the Ministry of Education issued the Circular on Encouraging Teachers to Actively Participate in Guiding Science and Technology Competitions for College Students (Letter of the Department of Education and Higher Education [2003] No. 165), advocating the active development of science and technology competitions for college students, and promoting the combination of teaching and scientific research, which is conducive to cultivating the practical ability, innovation and cooperation spirit of students, and is of great significance in promoting the reform of teaching and the construction of teaching.

After years of development, the system of national college student disciplinary competitions has been perfected, the number of competitions has been increasing, the scale of participation has been expanding, and the influence has been increasing. In order to standardize college student competition activities, in 2023, the Ministry of Education also released the “2023 National General College Student Competition Analysis Report”, which included 84 events in the competition list.

Lawyer Ge Youshan introduced that according to the current laws and relevant policies, competition organizers usually need to have specific qualifications. Generally speaking, the organizer of a formal competition should be a formal institution registered in the state preparation department and civil affairs department. The organizer should bear all the costs of carrying out the competition and recognition program, and should not charge the participating units and individuals in any form. “The charging behavior of any event must follow the relevant national laws and regulations. Organizers of formal events, especially when it comes to national and international competitions, must have the appropriate approval procedures and operating qualifications, need to have reasonable qualifications and standardized operating procedures, the level of the event, the choice of venues, equipment configuration, etc. need to meet certain standards. Academic competitions should have a clear legal or policy basis, and maintain openness and transparency, so as not to infringe on consumer rights and interests.”

Ge Youshan proposed that a more comprehensive regulatory system should be established at the legal level to prevent the phenomenon of “water competitions” from occurring, and to enhance the punishment for cottage competitions through reasonable legal interpretations. Education departments, civil affairs departments and market supervision and management departments should take active measures to effectively strengthen the supervision of “water race” and illegal competitions, guide students to participate in regular competitions in an orderly manner, and resolutely resist illegal competitions outside the list.

“It is recommended that regulators implement a 'black and white list' management system and regularly update and publicize the 'white list' and 'black list' of competitions. Greater efforts should be made to publicize the competition management policy as well as the competition lists to improve students' ability to recognize them. The regulatory authorities should guide the organizers of competitions within the 'white list' to improve the quality of the competitions, ensure the public welfare and educational nature of the competitions, and practically improve the level of students' scientific research and innovation through the organization of the competitions.” Ge Youshan lawyer said.

For the violation of the competition, Ge Youshan lawyers believe that we should effectively maintain a fair and just competition environment through strict law enforcement. All regulatory departments should strengthen communication and collaboration to form a more effective regulatory mechanism to combat “water contests” and illegal contests. Through information sharing, joint enforcement and other ways to improve the effectiveness of supervision, to ensure that all regulatory measures are put into practice, and effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of students.

“Establish smooth complaint and reporting channels, improve the social supervision mechanism, encourage all sectors of society to actively participate in exposing and reporting 'water contests' and irregular contests, and ensure that all sectors of society can conveniently reflect clues of irregular contests to the supervisory authorities, and that the contents of the reports should be promptly investigated and dealt with, so as to jointly maintain a fair and impartial competition environment.” Ge Youshan lawyer said. (Students interviewed in the text are pseudonyms)