Rural Chinese student sparks awe and suspicion after beating math elites in global contest

Hong Kong CNN — A fashion major from a vocational high school in rural China has amazed the nation by outshining elite students in a global math contest – but the teenager’s underdog story has now been mired by controversy.

Jiang Ping, born in a poor village in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, ranked 12th out of 802 shortlisted competitors – mostly from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and MIT – in first-round results released on June 13 by DAMO Academy, the organizer of the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition.

Launched in 2018 by Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, the free online contest is open to math enthusiasts worldwide, though Chinese math majors typically dominate the top places. This year’s top 85 finishers will win prizes from $2,000 to $30,000.

Jiang’s high placement – in the first of the contest’s two rounds – was a remarkable achievement for a student from one of the country’s vocational schools, which suffer deep-seated social prejudices and whose graduates occupy the lowest rungs of China’s educational hierarchy.