China's PhD Candidate at 16 Becomes Unemployed: Calls It Revenge

China – Every parent wants their children to be intelligent so that they can lead a good life. However, some parents use their children as tools to fulfill their unfulfilled ambitions in their youth.

This also happens to Zhang Xinyang, 28, a Chinese prodigy who won a university place at the age of 10 and went to graduate school at 13, now says “sitting around and doing nothing is the key to lifelong happiness”.

Once well-known as China’s youngest university student and China’s youngest graduate student, Zhang is still financially dependent on his parents.

In 2011, at the age of 16, he became a PhD student in Applied Mathematics at Beihang University, a top Chinese university in Beijing.

He sparked a national controversy by demanding his parents, from a fourth-tier city in northeastern China’s Liaoning province, buy him a Beijing flat worth two million yuan (US$275,000) or equivalent to IDR 4,137,650, 000,000. 

Zhang told his parents if they didn’t buy him the flat he would give up his master’s degree and reject his PhD offer.

His parents finally rented a Beijing flat and lied to him that they had bought it, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported in 2011.

“Buying an apartment, finding a good job, and a Beijing hukou” and so becoming officially registered as a city resident - was “success”, Zhang said in the report.

“You expect me to stay in Beijing more than anyone, and you should try hard for this,” he added. 

He completed his doctorate in 2019 and then became a university lecturer in the northwestern autonomous region of Ningxia Hui, resigning two years later.

His view of success has changed completely since he was a PhD student. He now does not have a full-time job, he only has a few thousand yuan in his bank account, he lives in a rented flat in Shanghai doing freelance work and he is still financially dependent on his parents.

“They owe me this,” Zhang expressed.