Last Monday evening, a 9-year-old boy named Xiao Zhu fell from the 10th floor. Numerous details reported by the media have pointed to the boy’s father and his extreme parenting methods.

According to reports, Xiao Zhu was an amateur 6-dan Go player striving to become a professional. Just before his fall, he had lost a match and was kicked to the ground by his father on the spot. While evidence from the scene cannot confirm whether the fall was a suicide or an accident, Chinese police have now reported that Xiao Zhu was injured after being beaten by his father that day and died despite emergency treatment.

Born in Quanzhou, Fujian, Xiao Zhu gained local fame for his exceptional Go skills. To further improve, he moved to Hangzhou with his father to train. But behind this precocious boy was a brutally harsh parent.

Xiao Zhu’s father, a food delivery worker, had gone through two divorces due to domestic violence. After the boy’s mother left, Xiao Zhu could not escape his father’s beatings.

Fellow Go students often saw Xiao Zhu compete with visible injuries. Even on his father’s social media, the boy frequently appeared with wounds and bruises. He was so anxious that he gnawed on wooden pen shafts. Even a single loss would prompt his father to write in his notebook: “Played terribly.”

So far, Chinese police have not issued a final report. While a few voices argue that disciplining children is necessary, the overwhelming sentiment in China’s online forums is outrage. Many label the father a monster, question the inaction of police and women’s organizations, and demand he be held accountable for child abuse—regardless of whether he directly caused the boy’s death.

While Xiao Zhu in Fujian suffered under his father’s cruelty, another high school student in Shaanxi has also come under public scrutiny—this time for the privileges afforded by her relationship with her father.

Earlier this week, netizens revealed that a student named Zhang from the international division of Xi’an High School, Class of 2024, had co-authored multiple SCI (Science Citation Index) papers with her father, a professor at Shaanxi University of Technology. In one case, she was even listed as the first author.

When a journalist contacted her school, administrators confirmed that Zhang was an excellent student with an IELTS score of 8.5 and planned to study abroad after graduation. According to the school’s official website, she had won numerous international awards, including the Global Gold Award in the 2023 British Biology Olympiad (BBO), the Gold Award in the 2022 US Biology Olympiad, and the Global Silver Award in the 2022 Australian Science Olympiad Chemistry competition (ASOC).

A call to the university where Zhang’s father teaches was answered by a colleague, who stated that the matter had been clarified: “There’s nothing wrong. The child works hard, and so do the teachers.”

As of publication, neither of these two incidents has reached a conclusion. But the stark contrasts in parenting styles, the inequality in educational resources, and the vastly different fates of these gifted children from different backgrounds have unsettled many in China.

Earlier this week, China’s Ministry of Education and the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission both issued documents aimed at reducing the academic burden on students in primary and secondary schools.

Shanghai’s guidelines for the next five years include: no written homework for Grades 1 and 2; written homework for other primary grades to take no more than 60 minutes a day; and no more than 90 minutes per day for middle school students.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education issued a notice with a “negative list” of banned practices. It prohibits schools from starting terms early, delaying holidays, or using vacation time for supplementary lessons. It also bans frequent exams, among other things.

Now the question remains: do the government’s efforts to relieve pressure show that China’s education system can still help children achieve their dreams—or that the system is disconnected from reality? Does reducing the academic burden enable more children to learn under reasonable pressure—or does it widen the gap between children of different social backgrounds?

These are questions only time can answer. But one thing is clear: few Chinese parents are willing to take the risk of letting their children become sacrifices to so-called “happy learning.”

Editor: Zhongxiaowen