Chinese teen in Alibaba maths finals sparks awe, controversy after beating MIT students

Alibaba Group Holding's annual global maths contest finished on Saturday with all eyes on a 17-year-old vocational school student who has bested hundreds of competitors from prestigious universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Tsinghua University, generating intense interest and speculation online.

The Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, which has been hosted by Alibaba's Damo Academy annually for the past six years, except 2019, held the finals for this year's event over the weekend, with results to 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 rank 12th leading into the finals. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

As a student at Lianshui Secondary Vocational School in eastern Jiangsu Province, Jiang has stood out among the roughly 800 finalists, a group that also includes students from University of Cambridge and Peking University. Vocational schools in China are generally considered to be for students whose grades are not good enough to be admitted by high schools, where students study and prepare to take the university entrance examination, or gaokao.

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"Learning maths is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems, I feel quite happy," Jiang told the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily in a video interview this month. "No matter what the future holds, I will keep learning [maths]. I have never thought of giving up."

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

Jiang is the only person to have reached the final round who is not from an elite university either in China or overseas. She told Qilu Evening News that she chose the vocational school because her elder sister and some good friends study there.

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

"The story of Jiang Ping tells us that we must further optimise the talent identification and cultivation mechanism, so that talented and hard-working people can stand out as soon as possible ... [and] every piece of gold can shine," the state-run Xinhua News Agency said in a post on microblogging platform Weibo.

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

The national attention has also sparked scrutiny and some controversy. Since Jiang passed the initial test to reach the finals, other contestants have questioned her scores and maths competence.

In a joint letter sent to the organising committee last Wednesday, 39 other finalists said Jiang "made several apparent writing mistakes" while solving a problem on a blackboard in a documentary video released by Damo Academy. "It appears that she seemed unfamiliar with these mathematical expressions and symbols," the contestants wrote.

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

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

"She is a self-disciplined girl," Wang told the newspaper. "When her classmates are playing around, Jiang Ping spends all her spare time studying maths."

In a joint letter sent to the competition's organising committee, 39 other finalists complained of "writing mistakes" made by Jiang Ping in a video released by Damo Academy. Photo: Weibo alt=In a joint letter sent to the competition's organising committee, 39 other finalists complained of "writing mistakes" made by Jiang Ping in a video released by Damo Academy. Photo: Weibo>

Discussions online about Jiang's capabilities have been circulating since Richard Xu, who claimed to be one of the signatories of the joint letter, released the document publicly on social media on Sunday. He said the organising committee had yet to respond.

Many people online still see Jiang's story as inspirational, however, and have voiced support on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. News of her achievement received more than 6 million likes on the short video app.

"What an amazing girl! I admire her efforts and 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 voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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