The story of Li Xiangnan, a “child prodigy” in Laiyang, East China’s Shandong province, was widely spread online, yet journalists found there were holes in it. The local education bureau is believed to have led in making the story and further probe is going on. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

Several media outlets have already pointed out several fatal problems with Li’s story. For instance, he claims he signed a pre-admission contract with Massachusetts University of Technology, which does not exist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which carries a similar name, said they do not sign such contracts.

He posted photos of some emails about his pre-admission offer online, but these emails were sent from one of his own email accounts to other email accounts he owned.

He said he won a Gold in an international ACPC computer competition, yet no one could find the organizer of the competition.

It seems that Li’s story is false and someone fabricated it.

Li is only a 14-year-old middle school student; if he fabricated the story himself, it would not have been so harmful. It is the publicity efforts of the local education bureau that helped spread the false story and fooled so many people.

The local education bureau has said that they publicized Li’s story to promote Laiyang’s image. The problem is, the image of the city will never be promoted with false stories. Such claims will eventually be found to be false. When that happens, the fake stories will only hurt the local government’s image.