Hong Kong
CNN
—
A fashion student at a vocational high school in rural China has stunned the nation by beating top students in a global mathematics competition, but the teenager’s underdog story is now embroiled in controversy.
Born in a poor village in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, Jiang Ping was ranked 12th out of 802 finalists, most of whom were from prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oxford and MIT, in the first-round results announced on June 13 by DAMO Academy, the organizer of the Alibaba World Mathematics Competition.
Launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2018, the free online contest is open to math enthusiasts around the world, but the top spots tend to go to Chinese math students. This year’s top 85 contestants will receive prizes ranging from $2,000 to $30,000.
Jiang’s top finish in the first of the competition’s two rounds was a notable achievement for a student from one of China’s vocational schools, which suffers from deep-rooted social prejudice and whose graduates occupy the lowest rung of China’s education hierarchy.
Her success was initially met with nationwide acclaim, with the story picked up by several Chinese state media outlets and sparking a flood of online comments after a vocational school student performed well in an international mathematics competition.
But doubts about the 17-year-old’s maths skills have been growing online since late last month ahead of the announcement of the results of the more challenging second round next month – doubts which organisers are yet to address.
According to state news agency Xinhua, Jiang’s talent for mathematics became evident in middle school, when her grades far surpassed those of her classmates, and she went on to study fashion design under the tutelage of mathematics teacher Wang Runqiu at Lianshu Vocational Secondary School.
Wang, a three-time finalist in the competition, has spent the past two years helping Jiang teach herself advanced mathematics, according to Xinhua.
Since it was announced that Jiang had made it into the top 20 in the first round, related hashtags have been the most searched on X-like platform Weibo, with more than 650 million views so far. In Jiang’s hometown, her appearance was broadcast on television screens at a local shopping mall.
Jiang completed the final round on June 22nd, and the results are scheduled to be announced in August.
Alibaba Damo Academy Floor Sweeping Monk/Bilibili
Screenshots from the official documentary show Jiang solving math problems on a blackboard.
But just a day after the final, Richard Xu of Harvard Business School, who placed 190th in the first round, announced on China’s Quora-like site Zhihu that he, along with 38 other contestants, had submitted a joint letter to the organizing committee calling for an independent investigation into Jiang and Wang’s answer papers from the preliminary round.
The letter cites “evidence” of wrongdoing, including the theory of “concerted fraud” led by Wang, who was ranked 125th.
Four days before the final round, organizing committee member Yin Wotao defended Jiang in a reply to X’s skeptics that was quickly deleted.
Given the moderate difficulty level and generous 48-hour time limit, “mathematicians without a math background have performed well in the preliminary rounds over the past few years,” Yen argued.
Blocked from accessing Yin’s brief comment due to China’s internet restrictions, users took to the Lianshui county government’s website to demand a formal investigation into Jiang and Wang.
On June 27, the local government confirmed what had previously been rumours circulating online: Jiang had only managed to score 83 points out of a possible 150 in a school mathematics exam taken after the preliminary round. The following day, in response to further related questions, the government offered a boilerplate reply that it was “under investigation”.
Soon after, all posts related to Jiang were deleted and have not been updated since.
Yoon, a member of the organizing committee, told CNN on June 28 that he shared the public’s desire to know the whole truth, but declined to comment unless given permission by DAMO Academy, where he works.
CNN contacted the academy for comment, but neither Jiang nor her teacher, Wang, could be reached.
Amid the flurry of commentary, some suspect the public scrutiny of Jiang is rooted in social prejudice against vocational school students.
“The very fact that Jiang, a vocational school student, has attracted so much public attention reflects societal dissatisfaction with China’s education system,” Zhao Yong, a distinguished professor of educational psychology at the University of Kansas, told CNN.
These students make up the bottom 40% of students in China’s “zhongkao” high-school entrance exam, making them ineligible to enter mainstream high schools where students cram for China’s notoriously tough “gaokao” college entrance exam.
In a society where poor academic performance is often seen as a moral failing, the words “slacker,” “lazy,” and “delinquent” have become synonymous with a generation that performed poorly in their junior high school entrance exams at age 15 and was condemned to slog in factories for the rest of their lives.
This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s and 1990s, when there was an urgent need for skilled workers and vocational schooling was seen as a path to a “rice bowl of iron” – a stable job. But the boom quickly faded after higher education expanded in 1999.
China has stepped up vocational education in recent years as it races to achieve its ambitious “Made in China 2025” goal of becoming a “global manufacturing powerhouse,” but structural discrimination in Chinese schools, universities and workplaces means society still prioritizes degrees over jobs.
Alibaba Damo Academy Floor Sweeping Monk/Bilibili
Screenshots from the documentary show Jiang ironing clothes.
In an interview with the Communist Party-run newspaper Beijing News, Jiang said he wants to go to college, with Zhejiang University, a top school in the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou, as his dream school. But despite his apparent talent for math, that may still be difficult.
Jiang’s supervisor, Wang, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that restrictions on his choice of major for his future vocational education meant he could only apply to three universities in Jiangsu province, with a second-tier public university being his best option.
“In China, talent is selected and classified too early and too rigidly, which severely limits individuals’ future options and career paths,” Zhao said, citing Germany and Finland as better examples of dual-track education that give students more flexibility to switch between vocational and academic courses.
Over the past decade, Beijing has tried to follow the example of those European countries and encourage resource exchanges between the two types of schools, but has received a chilly response from high schools busy tutoring students to get high scores on the college-entrance exam, known as the gaokao.
Mr Zhao said Ms Jiang was “a lucky rare individual” if she was truly gifted in mathematics, but he warned she could become a “lost Einstein” – one of the many talents lost to China’s education system.
The jury is yet to be selected, but the results of the second round are expected to be announced next month.
According to the Beijing News, Jiang sees maths as “Plan B” and is prioritizing fashion design for her future studies.
Zhao said working in a factory was a “rational choice” for the 17-year-old village girl, who has limited options for further education as a vocational trainee.
“At the end of the day, she has kids to provide for,” he said.
