Sichuan University (四川大学, Sìchuān Dàxué) is a large comprehensive university in Chengdu with substantial international cohorts, including in medicine. The degree thesis, the 学位论文 (xuéwèi lùnwén), works the same way for you as for domestic students, and it is worth understanding the sequence before you are inside it.
The thing to grasp first is the ordering. At Sichuan, the similarity check is a gate you pass before your thesis goes out for review. Miss it and you are not delayed by a week; you are delayed to the next processing window.
The national framework changed in 2025
The 学位法 (xuéwèi fǎ, Academic Degrees Law) took effect on 1 January 2025 and repealed the 1980 Regulations on Academic Degrees. Sichuan reissued its own degree-award measure the same year, as 川大研〔2025〕23号 四川大学学位授予实施办法.
That measure is the governing document for degree award at Sichuan, but the graduate school publishes it as a scanned PDF. You cannot search it and automated tools cannot read it. Open it and read the relevant chapter properly rather than relying on a summary, including this one.
What the law itself guarantees you, regardless of what any local document says:
| Article | Effect |
|---|---|
| 25 | Your thesis goes to expert reviewers before the defence is organised |
| 26 | Master's defence committee: at least 3 members. Doctoral: at least 5, including at least 2 from outside the university |
| 27 | If the defence is not passed, with the committee's agreement you may revise within a set period and reapply |
| 37 | A degree may be withheld or revoked for ghostwriting (代写), plagiarism (剽窃) or falsification (伪造) |
| 39 | You must be told the facts, reasons and basis before such a decision, and be heard |
| 40 | You may apply for 学术复核 (academic review) of an academic evaluation you dispute; the university must re-convene experts and decide within 30 days |
Article 44 states that overseas applicants are assessed under the same conditions and procedures. International students are inside this system, not alongside it.
全盲评审: Sichuan reviews blind at both levels
Many Chinese universities apply blind review to doctoral theses and to a sample of master's theses. Sichuan's published rule is broader: master's and doctoral theses are both subject to 全盲评审 (quánmáng píngshěn, fully blind review).
| Master's | Doctoral | |
|---|---|---|
| Reviewers | 2 experts | 5 blind reviewers |
| External requirement | At least 1 from outside the university | Blind panel |
| Anonymisation | Your responsibility | Your responsibility |
Anonymising properly is a real task, not a formality. You must remove your name, your supervisor's name and any other information that reveals identity. Doctoral candidates also submit an 创新自评表 (innovation self-assessment form), and that has to be anonymised too. The usual leaks are acknowledgements, funding numbers, institutional email addresses in figure captions, and self-citations written as "in our earlier work at this laboratory".
The 重合率 gate before review
查重 (chá chóng) is the mandatory similarity check every Chinese degree thesis goes through. At Sichuan it is positioned as an entry condition for review.
The School of Polymer Science and Engineering publishes the operational rule: a 重合率 (chónghé lǜ, overlap rate) of no more than 10% allows the thesis to proceed normally to 送审 (sòngshěn, submission for review), and anything above 5% requires a written explanation from your supervisor, signed.
That 5% explanation step is the part students miss. A thesis at 8% is not automatically fine; it is fine with a signed supervisor statement. Build that into your timeline, because it needs your supervisor available at the point you get your report.
Sichuan University does not publish a single university-wide threshold that we could verify across all schools. Get your own 培养单位 to confirm its current figure in writing before you write up, and ask specifically whether a recheck is allowed.
The AI rule, in actual numbers
This is where Sichuan is ahead of most institutions. The 2026 undergraduate screening notice states that theses are checked through the CNKI (中国知网) system and that 100% of theses also go through an AIGC detection tool, with published caps:
| Discipline group | Maximum AI-generated content |
|---|---|
| Humanities and social sciences (文科) | 20% |
| Science, engineering and medicine (理工医科) | 15% |
Theses over the cap go back to the supervisor and student, and misuse is handled under the university's own regulations on AI tools in undergraduate teaching. The screening window for the 2026 cohort ran from 9 April to mid-May.
Those figures are published for undergraduate theses. Ask your graduate school whether an equivalent screen applies at master's or doctoral level; treat the absence of a published number as "not yet published", not as "no limit".
Formatting and length
The professional master's requirements set out the house style clearly, and it is the same visual standard you will see in Sichuan theses generally.
| Element | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Total length | More than 30,000 characters |
| Chinese abstract | 700 to 1,000 characters |
| English abstract | 3,000 to 4,000 characters |
| Acknowledgements | At least 300 characters |
| References | At least 25 |
| Keywords | 3 to 5 |
| Paper | A4, printed double-sided |
| Margins | 2.5cm top, bottom, left and right |
| Body text | 宋体 at 小四号, fixed 20pt line spacing |
| Headings | 黑体, 1.5 line spacing, stepping down from 小三号 to 小四号 |
| Running head | 五号宋体, from the abstract to the end |
| Contents | Three levels (第1章, 1.1, 1.1.1) |
The abstract is expected to cover the purpose of the topic, the methods, the results and the conclusions, and to make the original contribution explicit. No figures or tables in it.
Note the asymmetry between the Chinese and English abstracts. The Chinese abstract is counted in characters and the English one in characters of English text, so the English abstract is substantially the longer document. If you are writing in English, that is the easier half; the Chinese abstract is where international students usually need help, and it is not optional. Confirm with your school and the graduate school what approval you need to write the thesis itself in a language other than Chinese, before you start.
What counts as plagiarism here
Sichuan's professional master's requirements put numbers on this rather than leaving it to judgement. Continuous quotation of more than 200 characters without attribution counts. So does adapting someone else's work to more than 15% of your total length, using data or figures without authorisation, and translating or paraphrasing a translation of someone else's work beyond 15%.
Those definitions matter for international students in particular. Translating a Chinese source into English, or an English source into Chinese, without attribution is plagiarism under this rule. It is not a grey area and no similarity tool will necessarily catch it.
If the writing itself is what you are struggling with rather than the rules, our thesis writing support works chapter by chapter.
答辩 and the timetable
The processing months are fixed, and the defence and degree application guidance is explicit that you cannot even start the application until the prerequisites are done.
| Stage | Processed in |
|---|---|
| 送审 (thesis sent for review) | March, July, September |
| 答辩 and degree application | May, September, November |
You may submit the defence and degree application only once all reviewer opinions have returned and the defence time, place and panel have been fixed. Doctoral candidates submit the thesis, the set of reviewer opinion forms, the application, published papers and a profile form; master's candidates submit the degree application, thesis, reviewer opinions, the similarity clearance certificate and published papers, sealed into the file envelope. The application needs signatures from your supervisor and your department head.
Committee composition follows the statutory minimums in Article 26 of the Academic Degrees Law. Confirm the exact numbers your school applies, since the university's own measure may set higher ones.
If you do not pass, Article 27 gives you the route back: revise within the period set, with the committee's agreement, and apply for a new defence.
Deposit, and when your thesis becomes public
Before the degree is awarded you sign a 学位论文使用授权声明, the authorisation declaration. It grants the university the right to keep printed and electronic copies, to index the bibliographic record on the campus network, and to make the full text readable in the library or on the campus network once the thesis is open or declassified.
The second half of that form is the one to read carefully. You choose when your thesis is released through the CALIS university thesis full-text database:
- Released one year after submission, for theses classified 公开 (open)
- Released three years after submission, for theses classified 内部 (internal), which requires your school's official stamp
The database's own charter notes that full text is normally published within six months of submission by default, and that the copyright holder may extend that to one or two years. Your choice on the paper form must match what you select in the online submission system.
If you have a patent application, a commercial partner or an unpublished paper riding on this work, decide your release option before you sign, not after. Changing it later means asking for an exception.
After the degree: 学位论文抽检
Chinese degree theses stay subject to review after graduation. Under the national 博士硕士学位论文抽检办法, roughly 10% of doctoral theses and 5% of master's theses are sampled each year from the previous academic year's awards. Each sampled thesis goes to three peer reviewers; two or more 不合格 verdicts make it a 存在问题学位论文 (problem thesis), and a single 不合格 triggers re-review by two more experts.
The published consequences fall on the institution: quality interviews where problems recur two years running, and possible withdrawal of the authority to award degrees in that field. Revoking an individual degree is separate, and runs through Article 37 of the Academic Degrees Law where ghostwriting, plagiarism or falsification is established.
Pre-submission checklist
- Overlap rate confirmed against my school's current figure, with a signed supervisor explanation if above 5%
- Anonymised copy checked line by line: no author, supervisor, lab or funding identifiers
- Doctoral: 创新自评表 completed and anonymised
- Length, abstract word counts and reference minimum met
- A4, 2.5cm margins, body in 宋体 小四号 at fixed 20pt line spacing, running head from the abstract onward
- Chinese abstract written to length and checked by a native reader
- Translated sources attributed; nothing adapted beyond the 15% definition
- 学位论文形式审查合格证明 and 送审申请 prepared for the March, July or September window
- All reviewer opinions back before starting the defence application
- Release option on the authorisation declaration chosen deliberately and matched online
Where to ask
Your 学院 (school) graduate office owns the overlap threshold, the review submission window and the forms. The graduate school (研究生院) owns the degree-award measure, language approval and the final award decision. The library handles deposit and the CALIS release option.
When a school page and a university page disagree, ask the school office which one applies to your cohort and get it in writing. And if you are preparing journal articles alongside the thesis, which many Sichuan doctoral programmes expect, our research paper support covers that separately.
