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

Jiang Ping has become the subject of national curiosity after climbing past competitors from Stanford, Cambridge, and Tsinghua to reach the finals.

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A 17-year-old vocational school student from rural China became a celebrity on social media after reaching the final round of Alibaba’s annual maths competition. Photo: Weibo

Ann Caoin ShanghaiandAlice Yanin Shanghai

Published: 9:00am, 26 Jun 2024Updated: 9:22am, 26 Jun 2024

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.

“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

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.