How Chinese maths prodigy got caught in a cheating storm

CHINA: A Chinese maths prodigy has been accused of cheating in a mathematics contest.

Seventeen-year-old Jian Ping, a fashion design student, came in 12th in the qualifying round of an international maths competition run by Alibaba.

She was the only finalist from a vocational school, with most of the other 800 finalists coming from elite universities. She became an overnight sensation as a result.

She was labelled a prodigy by social media and the press because she had “appeared” to have outperformed students from high-ranking institutions all over the world, including Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Oxford.

How a Chinese maths ‘prodigy’ unravelled in cheating storm https://t.co/t8L0GNNiaQ

— BBC Education (@bbceducation) November 8, 2024

As her fame grew, people started to look into her background and methodology. She had made “several writing mistakes” and “seemed unfamiliar with mathematical expressions and symbols.”

Her school then wrote in a statement on Sunday that Jiang had indeed been assisted by her teacher, Wang and Wang had been given a warning and disqualified from the teachers’ award for the year.

The statement also called for Jiang to be protected and not treated too harshly.

On Sunday, the competition organizers said that Jiang had gone against the competition rules by getting help from her teacher, who also happened to be a contestant.

“This has exposed problems like inadequacies in the competition format and the lack of rigour in supervision. We sincerely apologize,” said the organisers.

The final results were announced on Sunday, and neither Jiang nor her teacher were among the 86 winners.

The revelation about Jiang and her teacher resulted in a wave of brickbats. Still, many social media users also stood up for Jiang, saying that the school and the teacher were more responsible than she was.

“Jiang Ping is not innocent; that’s without question. But who are the worst parties in this? The adults brought this child along to do a bad deed and let her suffer all the consequences,” reads one post on Weibo.

“Even if the whole thing was faked, Jiang Ping was not the mastermind behind it. She should not be burned at the stake,” said another on Weibo.