Following is copied from NYer's BBS
http://boards.newyorker.com/thread.jspa?threadID=736
I am surprised at this sudden interest in how articles are published in math journals. I, also a math professor (and not Chinese at that!)having refereed many papers, have heard of instances where the editors publish papers without sending it to a referee (and I have never doubted the good intent of the editor.) This is not the case with the article by Cao and Zhu, I was told that it was monitored regularly and details checked by some experts. If one does not understand it it needs to be told again: this is far more rigorous than refereeing. And does all the papers that appear in Asian Journal of Mathematics approved by all the editors or at least a large number of editors? Wow this is news to me!
More generally:
There is this laughable assumption about papers in math journals; once it is refereed, then lo and behold a positivist assumtion is supposed to kick in and one is supposed to be happy and content about the state of the math world without regard to how the referee reports are written. To assume that cliques, favoritism, croniysm, the pedigree and the like do not play a part in the publication game is a lousy joke not worthy of a laugh!
I am all for serious investigations into how papers are published in math journals, how prizes are awarded and resources are distributed etc etc. But let us not do it selectively just because one dislikes a particular personality!
This is not to defend anyone here, but let us cut to the chase; why so much outrage now when all this has been going on for generations?
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I am not a math professor, but I think math_scholar's accusition on how the zhu-cao's letter is published makes no sense.
As we all know in the scientific community that the eidtor-in-chief of a journal has the right judgment to give preference to certain papers. That's editor-in-chief is all about. Indeed, in many science fields other than mathematics, editor-in-chiefs of a journal do have the full power to publish his prefered and often turn over reviewer's comments. Historically significant enough, many important scientific papers were published against the reviewer's will.
I suspect your motive to mislead the readers.