The teenage 'maths prodigy' who turned out to be a cheat

A 17-year-old girl hailed as a "genius" for her score in an international maths competition in China was actually a cheat, said organisers.

Jiang Ping hit the headlines in June when she became the first finalist from a "lowly vocational school", said the BBC, but "months of scepticism" over her "stellar results" led to an investigation and a shocking discovery.

'Collaborative cheating'

There was surprise and excitement when the fashion design student came 12th in the qualifiers of the annual international maths contest run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba because nearly all of the 800 finalists came from elite universities.

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Jiang was described as a "genius", said the South China Morning Post, and was "held up as an example of someone who could overcome her modest educational background to achieve major success". She outperformed other finalists from institutions such as Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford University, and "quickly captured nationwide attention", said First Post.

Interviewed by the state-run People's Daily, she said that "learning maths is bumpy", but "every time I solve the problems, I feel quite happy".

But other finalists raised questions over apparent discrepancies in her performance, including an unfamiliarity with "mathematical expressions and symbols", and penned a joint letter to the organising committee.

The letter claimed there was "evidence" of potential fraud, including a theory of "collaborative cheating". The organising committee investigated and found that Jiang had violated competition rules in the preliminary round because she was helped by her teacher, Wang Runqiu, who was a contestant himself.

'Disappeared Einstein'

The organisers have apologised, admitting in a statement that the episode has "exposed issues such as inadequacies in the competition format" and "a lack of rigour in supervision".

Jiang has been roundly blasted on social media in China, but some users have insisted the blame lies with her school and teacher. Although the teenager is "not innocent", one user wrote on Weibo, the "worst parties in this" are the adults who "brought this child along to do a bad deed, and let her suffer all the consequences".

Among the "cacophony" of commentary, some suspect the "harsh public scrutiny" is "rooted in social prejudice" against vocational students, said CNN.

Zhao Yong, a distinguished professor in educational psychology at the University of Kansas, told the broadcaster that Jiang may become a "disappeared Einstein" – one of the "many buried talents in China’s education system".

As for Jiang herself, she regards maths as her "Plan B," said The Beijing News, and prefers fashion design for her future study. Her teacher, Wang, has been given a warning and disqualified from teachers' awards for the year.