No one has created as much buzz on Chinese social media this summer as Jiang Ping. The 17-year-old fashion design major from a vocational high school in East China’s Jiangsu Province found herself at the center of attention after besting math elites from prestigious universities worldwide in the preliminary round of a global math contest.
On June 13, the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition announced the 802 finalists. Shockingly, among qualifiers from top universities like Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Princeton, Tsinghua University and Peking University, Jiang Ping, a vocational high school student, ranked 12th.
Alibaba DAMO Academy, the competition organizer, posted a video interview with Jiang on Douyin on June 13. The video saw over 821,000 likes and 95,000 comments. In the interview, Jiang confessed she initially doubted she deserved to participate, but her love for advanced math pushed her to use the contest as a chance to prove herself.
Jiang’s remarkable performance initially drew widespread acclaim but soon faced growing skepticism. Many netizens admired Jiang as a miraculous math prodigy and were touched by her underdog story.
However, others voiced suspicions, wondering whether she had cheated.
These doubts intensified on June 23, when 39 contestants filed a joint letter to the organizing committee, requesting an independent investigation into Jiang’s answer sheet. Beyond questioning her mathematical abilities, Jiang’s story also ignited discussions about educational inequality and social prejudice against vocational students compared to university students.
So far, Jiang has not accepted any media interviews. She participated in the final contest on June 22, and the results will be released in August.
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