Creation: Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association Political Economy Group
On February 21st, Duan Jianchuan, who claimed to be the father of a student at Dalian Medical University, posted a plea for help, stating that his daughter had committed suicide by charcoal burning. Upon investigation, the student who committed suicide was Duan Jingyi, a third-year graduate student majoring in Radiological Imaging at Dalian Medical University, Class of 2022. The school stated that on the morning of the 14th, Duan Jingyi did not attend classes on time. After her classmates reported to the teachers, it was found that she was lying in her rented room, already deceased. “When the door was opened, the charcoal stove inside was still burning.” Blood tests showed that her carbon monoxide levels were severely above the standard.
At the time of her suicide, Duan Jingyi had only four months left before graduation. Her suicide was very likely related to her inability to submit her graduation thesis on time. Duan Jianchuan said that during the Spring Festival this year, she only returned to Guang’an from Dalian on the second day of the lunar new year and once mentioned needing to revise her thesis at the airport. Duan Jianchuan stated: “Her previous teacher said her thesis was poorly written and wouldn’t pass, so she was under a lot of pressure.”
Around 4 p.m. on February 13th, academic secretary Jiang discussed thesis data issues with Duan Jingyi via WeChat. As the deadline for thesis submission approached, her thesis still had serious issues with missing raw data. “If the raw data is missing, she won’t be able to graduate. (Even if) she graduates, if someone with ill intentions digs this up, her degree certificate could be revoked.”
According to informed sources, Duan Jingyi was unable to graduate because her supervisor, Zhang Weisheng, transferred to Shanghai Sixth Hospital and gave her thesis data to someone else to publish a paper, which made her thesis data unusable, rendering her graduation impossible. Moreover, Zhang Weisheng also severely criticized, threatened, and demeaned her.
At 4:24 p.m., Duan Jingyi was still shopping online for vitamins to take care of her health. After being informed by the teaching secretary that her data was insufficient for graduation, at 5:03 p.m., she purchased charcoal and a lighter online and ended her life in her rented house.
Duan Jianchuan said that his daughter had applied to change her supervisor before her death but was denied by both the supervisor and the school. Due to the fact that her phone could not be unlocked and he could not contact her classmates or friends, he still harbors many doubts and is nearly collapsing. His 87-year-old grandfather was hospitalized with a cerebral hemorrhage after learning of his granddaughter’s suicide.
Duan Jingyi’s suicide is not just her personal tragedy. In recent years, cases of suicide among clinical training students and medical graduate students have become increasingly frequent. According to Chinese law, medical students must undergo one year of internship and three years of standardized training before working in hospitals; otherwise, they cannot practice medicine. The standardized training for licensed physicians is called training but is essentially slave labor. During training, many medical students earn only 500-1,000 yuan per month, far below the minimum wage, yet they bear all the hard and exhausting work in the department. “Women act like men, men act like beasts,” is a popular saying among trainees. For master’s students in medical specialties, in addition to standardized training, they must also conduct research for graduation, and because their graduation involves “four certificates in one” (graduation certificate, degree certificate, training certificate, and physician license), missing any one of these means they cannot graduate. Medical professional master’s students and trainees have become a heavily oppressed group within hospitals. During training, their labor is not protected by labor law.
“When discussing wages and benefits, you are students; when discussing labor intensity, you are doctors.” The student identity makes them vulnerable to the weaknesses of petty-bourgeoisie. As master’s students, they often harbor illusions of opportunism, promotion, wealth, or maintaining a stable life. However, the bourgeoisie has never relied on thrift or personal effort to get rich, and petty-bourgeoisie cannot avoid bankruptcy through individual efforts, especially as the imperialist tendencies of the middle class deepen and their bankruptcy accelerates. After enduring three years of labor in training, some medical students see their hopes of opportunism shattered, and after suffering for three years without seeing a future, they choose to end their lives in despair. Duan Jingyi was one of them. For her supervisor, Duan Jingyi was not from an asset-owning family but was a weak student easily manipulated by a finger snap, while her supervisor had a near-asset status and position. That’s why her supervisor dared to recklessly misuse her research data and verbally insult her.
As of now, Dalian Medical University has not announced any investigation results and is vigorously covering up doubts. However, such obvious cover-ups cannot silence public opinion. Many medical students have been exposing the brutal training system and the oppression of graduate supervisors in comments on related articles and news. Yet, protests against China’s training system have been ongoing for over a decade. Since its implementation, medical students’ resistance has never stopped, but their protests often end with the tragic death of students, unable to overthrow the existing oppressive system. Crying day and night, they cannot kill Liu Jin (the founder of the training system), nor can they topple the mountain of oppression that the training system represents. The only way out for trainees is to unite with the workers’ movement, abandon illusions, and prepare for struggle!
