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The results of the math competition have sparked a national debate about schools and academic pathways in China.
In China, a 17-year-old girl hailed as a genius in a mathematics competition was cheated, competition organizers said, ending months of skepticism over her excellent results.
Jiang Ping, a fashion design student from a rural town in Jiangsu province, made headlines in June when she placed 12th in the qualifications of an international mathematics competition organized by the giant Chinese e-commerce Alibaba.
She was the first finalist since the competition began in 2018 to come from a modest vocational school, Chinese media reported. The vast majority of the 800 finalists were from elite universities.
Jiang's results made her an overnight sensation, and she was called a “prodigy” in the press and on social media.
Under China's notoriously unforgiving education system, academic excellence is praised. Many people online were encouraged by Jiang's results, seeing them as proof that students at vocational institutes could still excel academically.
However, as doubts about his abilities snowballed, competition organizers said last Sunday that Jiang had violated competition rules during the preliminary round, by receiving help from his teacher, who was also himself- same participant.
“This highlighted issues such as the inadequacies of the competition format and the lack of rigor in supervision. We sincerely apologize,” organizers said in a statement.
According to the final results announced on Sunday, neither Jiang nor his teacher were among the 86 winners of the competition.
The rise of a mathematical sensation
The annual mathematics competition is open to applicants from institutions around the world and organized by Damo Academy, Alibaba's research institute.
This year, Jiang, a student at Jiangsu Lianshui Secondary Vocational School, outperformed other finalists from some of the world's most prestigious institutions, including Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford.
She had chosen to study at a vocational school both because she was interested in fashion design and because her sister and friends were there, local media said.
Jiang's achievements and unconventional educational background quickly attracted national attention. Her story was featured in a video produced by the Damo Academy and she was interviewed by media outlets across the country.
“Learning mathematics is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems, I feel quite happy,” she told the People's Daily, an official newspaper. “No matter what the future holds, I will continue to learn. »
Jiang's teacher, Wang Runqiu, was also thrust into the spotlight, hailed as an educator who noticed and encouraged her passion for mathematics. Speaking to the media, he described her as an attentive student who had learned advanced mathematics herself.
“I encountered many setbacks in the process of learning mathematics,” he said. “So I want to do everything I can to help my students and let them know that there are other possibilities in the future.”
But alongside an outpouring of praise for Jiang and his teacher, the student's story also sparked a discussion about whether China's education system was doing enough to support gifted students in less academic majors – especially those who may not have received similar recognition from their teachers.
China's education system focuses much of its resources on those who take the “Gaokao”, the notoriously difficult exam that students must pass to gain entry to university. Vocational school students have long faced restrictions in taking the gaokao and enrolling in regular universities, until an education reform in 2022 offered vocational school students an alternative exam of entry into university.
A previous opinion piece published in state news media Xinhua said Jiang's results “hinted at an inconvenient truth: Even young people as talented as her can be easily buried without good degrees.”
“She wasn’t the mastermind.”
But as Jiang's fame grew, criticism and skepticism regarding his skills also began to bubble up.
In June, dozens of other finalists released a joint letter they wrote to the competition's organizing committee demanding an investigation into Jiang. They also requested that his answers to preliminary test questions be made public.
The finalists alleged that Jiang made “several apparent writing errors” in an online video and that she “appeared unfamiliar with these mathematical expressions and symbols.”
While the preliminary round of the competition allowed participants to use programming software, the final round was a closed book exam. The results of the final, initially scheduled for August, were postponed for several months.
When the results were finally released on Sunday, Jiang was not among the 86 winners in the final round.
Her school also confirmed in a statement on Sunday that Jiang had been helped by her teacher Wang, and that Wang had been given a warning and disqualified from teacher awards for the year. The statement also calls for clemency and protection of the teenager.
Attempts by the BBC to contact Jiang's family were unsuccessful. A social media account once used by his mother is now gone and a phone number linked to his father has been deactivated. Several phone calls from the BBC to Jiang's school went unanswered, and a village official refused to speak about Jiang when contacted by the BBC.
While Sunday's revelation sparked a wave of criticism against Jiang and her teacher, many social media users also spoke out in support of the teenager, arguing that the greatest responsibility lay with her school and his teacher.
“Jiang Ping is not innocent, there is no doubt about that. But who are the worst parties in all this? reads an article on Weibo. “The adults took this child away to do something bad and left her to suffer all the consequences.”
“Even if this was all fake, Jiang Ping was not the mastermind,” another wrote on Weibo. “She shouldn’t be burned alive.”
