Publisher told to stop supplying fake dictionary

The Hubei Province education authority said yesterday that it had ordered a publisher, Chongwen, to stop distributing dictionaries amid allegations they were fake.

The provincial agency has promised to punish anyone involved in the fraud and won't pay for the dictionaries till the investigation is completed.

A CCTV report claimed that Hubei's Department of Education had distributed 3.2 million volumes of fake Xinhua Dictionary - filled with errors - to rural students under a government aid program.

"The pirated copies had 0.2 percent printing errors, nearly 20 times more than allowed," said Zhou Mingjian, former deputy director of China Lexicographic Society.

Zou Huaqing, deputy director of the substandard dictionary's publisher Chongwen Publishing House, said Yang Heming, a literature professor with Wuhan University, and several other experts had edited the dictionary. But Yang has denied any involvement.

There is no credit to any authors in the dictionary.

Another 600,000 volumes were being printed which would be delivered to students.

Changjiang Publishing & Media Co Ltd, Chongwen's parent company, said it will destroy the dictionaries if the piracy allegations are confirmed.

Lexicographic experts also found the copies were made from ordinary papers rather than dictionary-customized papers, CCTV claimed.

The report suggested that the local education authority might have misused government funds and bought dictionaries of poor quality at a higher cost.

Last October, the finance and education ministries jointly allocated nearly 1.7 billion yuan (US$275 million) to regional authorities to provide 120 million rural students with free dictionaries under the nine-year compulsory education grant.

The Hubei education department was allocated 66.08 million yuan, data showed. That amount would have taken care of 4.7 million students but only 3.8 million students were covered, CCTV reported.

A genuine Xinhua Dictionary costs 14 yuan under the central government-subsidized program, compared with its retail price of 19.9 yuan.

Meanwhile, the monochromatic Chongwen 2013 edition picked by Hubei education authority was purchased at 14 yuan and is not available in local market. But its 2012 version, duo-colored and better printed, is sold for only 8 yuan at local book stores.

The badly edited 2013 edition was published in January after the central government unveiled the subsidized program.

Even the current general manger of Chongwen, Huang Chengyong, was hastily nominated. He used to be deputy general manager of Hubei's official teaching material purchaser/distributor.

Xinhua Dictionary has influenced generations since it was first published in 1953 and is the most widespread reference book in the world.