A name that showed up on academic conference agendas across six fields of study — journalism, history, musicology, aesthetics, materials science, accounting — between June and October, always attached to the same job title, did not survive two phone calls. According to Jiupai News reporting on October 30, staff at the office of Zhengzhou University's School of Journalism and Communication said on October 29 that the school had no such lecturer; the university's Academy of Fine Arts, whose lecturer title the same name had also carried, gave the same answer; the university's human resources office said verification was still under way [1]. Nothing in that sequence required inside information — a question from an alumnus, a professor's inquiries, and a few phone calls did the work. Four public checks, run in order, answer the question a diploma never answers: whether the person in front of you currently works at the university named next to their title — and, for claimed documents, what the record behind the claim covers.
The individual's identity is not settled here. The university's own check was unfinished when the report was published [1], and Zhengzhou University's English-language site carried no statement on the case as of this writing [7]. What a reader can settle is narrower: does a claimed affiliation hold up against public records? The four checks below — two institutional, one documentary, one human — are run in order of rising effort, and the case shows why the order matters.
Start with the list and the faculty page — then call
The first check is the institution itself, and it starts with the Ministry of Education's national list of higher education institutions. The current edition counts 3,196 institutions as of June 17, 2026 — 2,952 regular (1,412 undergraduate, 1,540 vocational or college) plus 244 for adult education — with the complete lists downloadable as spreadsheets; Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan institutions are not included in the list [2]. The ministry updates the list periodically, so confirm the edition date before treating an absence as meaningful. An institution missing from the current edition fails this first check; that is all the list can decide, which is why the person check comes next.
The second check is the person where they would have to appear. Schools publish staff lists on their own pages — the School of Journalism and Communication at Zhengzhou University lists its full-time faculty name by name, department by department [3]. In the reported case, the problem surfaced through people, not pages: an alumnus asked professor Liu Xiange (刘宪阁) whether the school had a lecturer named Chen Haoyao (陈浩垚); Liu did not recall one and asked contacts at the School of Foreign Languages, who found no such person either [1]. This article's own check of that school's published faculty list, run while reporting the piece, found the name absent as of October 31; the list is a point-in-time page rather than a registry of every arrangement, so it is the follow-up calls, not the page, that the report treats as confirmation [3] [1]. That ordering matters for anyone copying the method: an absent name is a reason to make the next call, not a conclusion by itself.
Credential portals answer for documents, not for job titles
The third check matches documents to claims. A claimed affiliation and a claimed credential are different records, and habits built around credentials cover only the second. CHSI — the student-record platform maintained by the Ministry of Education's Center for Student Services and Development — describes its coverage on the English portal as postsecondary student records, qualification certificates, college transcripts, high school diplomas and Gaokao scores, with an online verification report issued for employment, overseas study and further study; students can check their own records for free after real-name registration [4]. The scope statement also fixes the boundary: the listed services verify documents, and a current-employment check is not among them [4].
Teaching credentials have their own channel. The China Teacher Qualification Network lists certificate query among its online services [5]; the query page offers two tracks — holders query their own certificate with a registered account, while anyone else can fill in the required details without registering [6]. The page's own notes set the limits: it covers certificates issued from 2008 (2012 in Guangxi) through the national teacher-qualification management system; earlier certificates require contacting the issuing body; newly issued certificates are not queryable in real time, with spring certificates appearing at latest after mid-August and autumn ones after early January; and some older results lack the holder's photo [6]. A claimed teaching qualification can be tested there. A claimed job title cannot — that is what the faculty page and the office call are for.
Where each channel stops, a phone call continues
Each channel leaves a gap that the next step fills — the credential report does not confirm employment [4], the faculty page is a snapshot [3], the certificate query has waiting windows [6] — and the fourth check, the call, can itself come back empty: the reporter's call to the contact number the name had left connected, with no one responding [1]. The offices that did answer are what turned a suspicion into a reportable fact [1].
The case reached organizers too. According to Dawang News as relayed in Jiupai's report, staff at East China Normal University's International Chinese Language Culture College confirmed the college had organized the October 31 forum where the name was scheduled to speak, verified the identity as false, and cancelled the participation and the talk [1]. At a Shandong University conference a month earlier, the name had appeared on a sub-forum agenda; its moderator said he had registered, taken temporary leave and not attended, and that he could not understand the purpose — 'conferences cost money and bring neither fame nor profit' — one organizer's view, quoted as such [1]. At the same forum, a second claimed lecturer, 'Xu Xu of Shanxi Datong University', was likewise absent from that university's website, and its human resources office said no such lecturer existed [1]. The school page cited here is published in Chinese, so running this check can require reading Chinese [3].
Run all four before money changes hands
The order matters because each step asks more of the world than the one before. First, confirm the university on the Ministry of Education list [2]. Second, look for the person on the relevant school's faculty page [3]. Third, match any claimed degree or teaching qualification against CHSI or the teacher-qualification portal [4] [6]. Fourth, call the school office or human resources when the page and the claim disagree, or when the page is silent [1]. In the reported case, the mismatch surfaced through the inquiry chain — the alumnus's question, the professor's checks, the office and HR calls [1]; the faculty-page lookup is this article's own corroboration, not a step the case's actors are documented taking [3].
Jiupai's editorial note framed universities as the injured party in identity misuse, and the identity-check gap as a mechanism problem for academic conferences to fix over time [1]. For an individual applicant or a family, the same framing points the other way: every check above can be run before an application is submitted or a trip is booked [1] [2]. Where the checks were completed in this case, they produced answers; where they were not — the human resources verification still open at reporting time, the call that connected to no one — the record shows what an unfinished check looks like [1].
What a student can do
- Before paying a conference registration fee or citing someone's affiliation in your own work, find the claimed university on the Ministry of Education institution list [2].
- Check the person's name on the relevant school's faculty page, and call the school office or the university's human resources office when the name is missing or the title is unusual [3] [1].
- For a claimed degree, ask for the CHSI online verification report, or check your own records through the portal's English interface [4].
- For a claimed teaching qualification, use the certificate query and note the 2008/2012 coverage window and the query lag rules [6].
What a parent can do
- Verify the institution name on the Ministry of Education list before any payment or paperwork, including names quoted by third parties on your child's behalf [2].
- Ask which school (学院) within the university your child will deal with, open that school's own site and the university's main site when looking for whom to call — Zhengzhou University's English site, for one, links a telephone directory [7].
- Request the CHSI verification report for any credential document your child is asked to provide [4].
- Treat a missing name or an unanswered call as a reason to pause the transaction and recheck through the university's human resources office or the certificate's issuing body [1] [6].