Squeezed by China’s Slowdown, Internet Users Lash Out at Elites
A Harvard graduate, a doctor and an actress have been at the center of social media storms over perceived privilege. Some see economic anxiety behind it.
What do a Chinese commencement speaker at Harvard, an actress posting selfies and a trainee doctor at a Beijing hospital have in common?
Not much — except that they’ve all found themselves at the heart of fierce online debates in China about privilege and inequality.
The three disputes, which have dominated Chinese social media in recent weeks, all featured accusations that the main players had gotten ahead by dirty means, whether that was true or not.
The Harvard graduate faced questions — unfair ones, some say — about how she had gotten into the elite American university; the actress, about how she could afford the flashy jewelry she wore in her selfies; and the doctor, about how she’d obtained her job at the hospital. All three were depicted as having had a leg up because of parents with connections.
There is no evidence that the Harvard graduate did anything wrong, while Chinese government investigations have found fault in the other two cases. But many commentators, in state-run media and elsewhere, have said that the outcries over all three may share a common root: a sense of resentment and anxiety that in China’s fiercely competitive society, merit may be irrelevant.
Such concerns are longstanding, but they have grown more urgent as China’s economy slows and opportunities for upward mobility seem to be disappearing. The government, fearing social unrest, has vowed to address inequality. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has pledged to work for “common prosperity” and crack down on corruption.
Still, discontent remains widespread.
The outcry around the Harvard student, Jiang Yurong, began with what could have been a moment of national pride. Her speech at Harvard’s graduation ceremony last week was reported to be the first by a Chinese woman. She used it to call for remembering our common humanity in the face of division.
An excerpt from Ms. Jiang’s speech.
- Today that promise of a connected world is giving way to division, fear and conflict. We are starting to believe those who think — those who think differently, vote differently, or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong. We mistakenly see them as evil. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Some people on Chinese social media did celebrate the speech. But others questioned how Ms. Jiang, who had completed a master’s degree at Harvard Kennedy School, had gotten into the university. They said that only the elite could afford an international education and suggested that she may have relied on family connections.
Hashtags about her have been viewed more than 130 million times on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.
Ms. Jiang, who attended high school in Britain and earned an undergraduate degree from Duke, did not respond to a request for comment. But on Chinese social media, she has defended her academic qualifications. While acknowledging that she was lucky to be able to afford an overseas education, she also said she had saved up for it. According to a post on Harvard’s official news site, she attended high school on a scholarship.
She criticized what she said was the Chinese public’s reflexive bitterness toward successful people.
“At present, many people have been warped by disillusionment with reality,” she wrote online on Tuesday. She added, “Their default logic for looking at things is, ‘This is impossible, you must be privileged, look at how hypocritical you are.’”
Some commentators see Ms. Jiang as a scapegoat for broader social discontent.
“It’s true, these kinds of opportunities are still difficult for ordinary people to find and obtain,” Hu Xijin, a former editor of the Communist Party-controlled tabloid Global Times, wrote in a blog post. He added, “Fairness is the key issue to achieving societal emotional stability.”
Mr. Hu said the anger toward Ms. Jiang seemed to build on frustration over the other two online controversies involving perceived privilege.
The first erupted when a doctor at the prestigious China-Japan Friendship Hospital publicly accused her husband, also a doctor there, of cheating on her with other women at the hospital.
Social media users excoriated her husband, Xiao Fei, who was subsequently found by China’s National Health Commission to have conducted several affairs. The investigation also found that he had left an operating room with a surgical assistant while an anesthetized patient was on the table. The commission did not name the assistant, but Mr. Xiao’s wife had said it was one of the women he was seeing, whom she identified as Dong Xiying.
Internet users had begun looking into Ms. Dong, a trainee doctor. They noted that her parents were an executive at a state-owned company and a high-ranking university official, and that she had studied economics as an undergraduate. They questioned her medical qualifications.
The health commission found that Ms. Dong had falsified medical school admissions materials and plagiarized her doctoral dissertation. Her diploma and medical license were revoked, and Mr. Xiao was fired from the hospital. Neither could be reached for comment.
The other online scandal revolved around an 18-year-old actress, Huang Yangtiantian, who had shared photographs of herself wearing elaborate emerald earrings. Social media users determined that they were from a luxury brand and cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. They questioned how Ms. Huang, who is not a major star, could afford them.
The internet sleuths learned that her father, Yang Wei, was a former local official who had later gone into private business, and they speculated that he had abused his position.
Mr. Yang denied any corrupt behavior and said his daughter’s earrings were replicas. But an investigation by the local government in Sichuan Province for which he had worked found that he might have engaged in illegal business activities. (Ms. Huang and Mr. Yang did not respond to requests for comment.)
As each successive scandal has unfolded, the earlier ones have faded from view. Some observers have said that new ones will keep emerging until China’s economic inequality is resolved.
Yan Zhihua, a researcher at Nanjing University, wrote in the news outlet Caixin that the public was “psychologically unprepared” for China’s economic slowdown, after so many years of growth and promises that shared prosperity was just around the corner.
Now, Mr. Yan wrote, the people are “collectively demanding an accounting.”
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people.