China to crack down on parental over-involvement in academic competitions

In response to recent revelations that some prize-winning projects of the China Adolescents Science & Technology Innovation Contest (CASTIC), one of the top science contests for Chinese students, were actually the work of their parents, the country’s education authorities have ordered all national academic competitions for students to investigate cheating.

The directive (in Chinese), issued by China’s Ministry of Education on July 20, takes aim at dubious practices like the one exploited in the CASTIC scandal, in which students can win prizes with sophisticated science projects that are created partially or entirely by their parents but submitted as “independent” research. In order to ensure the contests’ “authenticity and originality,” the Ministry asked the organizers to conduct a thorough check on prize-winning projects in the past.

“The goal is to eliminate submissions that are obviously well beyond students’ abilities and to crack down on cheating behavior such as parents and adults producing projects on students’ behalf,” it said.

The mandate comes after a recent controversy surrounding CASTIC, whose integrity was called into question after it revoked a third prize given to a primary school student. In 2019, the student won the prize for examining the function of a gene called C10orf67 in diagnosing and treating colorectal cancer. Back then, the award didn’t prompt any doubts. But in the past week, after a person found the project’s information on the contest’s website and shared a screenshot on social media, the prize immediately raised some serious eyebrows, with a number of skeptics saying that it’s impossible for a sixth-grader to complete what they called a Ph.D.-level research on his own, which is one of the competition’s rules.

Facing mounting scrutiny over his son’s achievement, the student’s father later admitted (in Chinese) in a public letter that he “participated too actively in the process of compiling the project’s written materials.” While the parent apologized for the “bad influence” the incident had on society, he denied any intentions of cheating, claiming that he was unaware of the requirement that projects should be “independently conducted.”

A string of similar cases were also discovered last week. One of them was a research project (in Chinese) co-produced by two primary school students in 2018, who won a prize by studying how antioxidants found in tea might be able to combat cancer. A particularly shocking case that’s currently under investigation is related to a middle school student in Chongqing (in Chinese), who has won prizes three years in a row since 2017, with studies ranging from physics and computer science to artificial intelligence. Most of his studies were found bearing striking resemblances to academic papers published by his father, who is a professor at a local university.

As one of the most prestigious science competitions for children in China, CASTIC sees more than 10 million students participating in its events every year, according to its official website. After rounds of elimination, only about 500 contestants are awarded and given the opportunity to showcase their studies in a year-end ceremony.

Before 2013, high school students who won first and second prizes in the competition could skip the college entrance exam and be accepted by top universities as outstanding talents through a special enrollment program. In 2013, the Education Ministry rolled out a policy ordering universities to stop accepting students solely based on their performance at CASTIC. But judging from documents (in Chinese) released by elite institutions like Tsinghua University in 2019, CASTIC prizes were still seen as an impressive achievement in application packages submitted by students through special programs.