China now tops the list of countries with the largest annual number of scientific publications. At the same time, China also leads the list of countries with the highest proportion of scientific publication retractions. The rise in this academic misconduct in China has given Chinese researchers a bad reputation and likely led to lower manuscript acceptance rates in academic journals. Plagiarism can be thwarted by strengthening ethics training for students and researchers, as well as implementing penalties for plagiarism offenses in universities, research institutions, and academic journals. The aims of this review are to summarize the characteristics of different types of plagiarism, to offer suggestions for incorporating ethical training into Chinese educators' curricula, as well as to point to various available scientific ethics training resources.