Chinese teenager in Alibaba math final sparks fear and controversy after beating MIT students

Alibaba Group Holding's annual global math competition concluded Saturday with all eyes on a 17-year-old vocational school student who beat hundreds of competitors from prestigious universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Tsinghua University, sparking intense interest and speculation online.

The Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, organized annually by Alibaba's Damo Academy for the past six years except 2019, held the finals of this year's event over the weekend, and the results will be announced in August. The star of the event was Jiang Ping, a fashion design student who recently beat artificial intelligence (AI) teams and students from top institutions to place 12th ahead of the finals. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

As a student at Lianshui Secondary Vocational School in eastern Jiangsu province, Jiang stood out among the nearly 800 finalists, a group that also includes students from Cambridge University and the University from Beijing. Vocational schools in China are generally considered to be for students whose grades are not good enough for admission to high schools, where students study and prepare to take the college entrance exam, or gaokao.

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“Learning mathematics is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems, I feel very happy,” Jiang told the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily in a video interview this month. “No matter what the future holds for me, I will continue to learn [maths]. I never thought about giving up.”

Damo Academy, the research arm of Alibaba, has hosted the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition since 2018. Photo: Weibo alt=Damo Academy, the research arm of Alibaba, has hosted the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition since 2018. Photo : Weibo>

Jiang is the only person to reach the final round who is not from an elite university, either in China or abroad. She told Qilu Evening News that she chose the vocational school because her older sister and some good friends were studying there.

Her performance in the Alibaba competition attracted widespread attention from both netizens and official media.

“Jiang Ping's story tells us that we need to further optimize the talent identification and cultivation mechanism, so that talented and hardworking people can stand out as quickly as possible… [and] every piece of gold can shine,” the official Xinhua news agency said in an article published on microblogging platform Weibo.

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Damo Academy declined to comment for this story. Jiang could not be reached for comment.

The national attention has also brought scrutiny and some controversy. Since Jiang passed the initial test to reach the final, other candidates have questioned his results and his math skills.

In a joint letter sent to the organizing committee last Wednesday, 39 other finalists said Jiang “made several apparent clerical errors” while solving a problem on a blackboard in a documentary video released by the Damo Academy. “It appears that she did not seem familiar with these mathematical expressions and symbols,” the candidates wrote.

They demanded that the committee conduct an independent investigation into their concerns, including allegations that Jiang was assisted by her teacher Wang Runqiu.

Wang reportedly discovered Jiang's talent for mathematics during a monthly exam two years ago, where she scored nearly 140 out of 150, while her classmates' scores were between 50 and 60, according to the Qilu Evening News.

“She is a disciplined girl,” Wang told the newspaper. “When his classmates are playing, Jiang Ping spends all his free time studying mathematics.”

In a joint letter sent to the competition's organizing committee, 39 other finalists complained about “writing errors” made by Jiang Ping in a video posted by the Damo Academy. Photo: Weibo alt=In a joint letter sent to the competition's organizing committee, 39 other finalists complained about “writing errors” made by Jiang Ping in a video posted by Damo Academy. Photo: Weibo>

Discussions about Jiang Zemin's abilities have been circulating online since Richard Xu, who claims to be one of the signatories of the joint letter, made the document public on social media on Sunday. He said the organizing committee had not yet responded.

However, many people online still view Jiang's story as inspirational and have expressed support for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. News of his success received more than 6 million likes on the short video app.

“What an extraordinary girl! I admire her efforts and her genius. I wish her a bright future,” said one online observer.

Another added: “She is an extraordinary person from an ordinary environment.”

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative news source on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP Facebook and website. Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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