Brother’s Identity Fraud Unravels After Property Dispute

A decades-old case of alleged academic identity fraud in China has unraveled in spectacular fashion, with a man’s PhD, all academic credentials, and Beijing residency revoked after his brother reported him to authorities. The case, which has spawned nearly a decade of litigation, highlights deep concerns about the integrity of China’s education and household registration systems.

According to NetEase News, the man, identified by the pseudonym Tang Xiangdong, allegedly used his younger brother’s college entrance examination (gaokao) admission identity to enroll at Xiangtan University in 2001. He subsequently completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the university, earned a PhD from Nankai University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Peking University before obtaining Beijing household registration (hukou) in August 2013 through a postdoctoral talent recruitment policy.

The Property Dispute That Started It All

The extraordinary chain of events began not with the academic fraud itself, but with a property dispute between the two brothers. In December 2012, the younger brother, identified as Tang Xiangxi, purchased a property in Beijing’s Xicheng District for 2.85 million yuan. In April 2017, the older brother sued his sibling, claiming he had borrowed the younger brother’s name to purchase the property because he lacked Beijing residency at the time.

The Beijing Xicheng District Court ruled in favor of the older brother in December 2017, finding that a verbal “borrowed-name property purchase” agreement existed between the brothers. However, after losing the property appeal, the younger brother sent a signed complaint to Xiangtan University on December 29, 2017, accusing his older brother of using his gaokao admission identity in 2001.

A Cascade of Revocations

The complaint triggered a rapid unraveling of the older brother’s academic and professional life. In August 2018, Xiangtan University issued a formal decision revoking the older brother’s undergraduate degree, confirming that someone else had used the identity to attend the university. This triggered a cascade of revocations: his master’s degree and PhD were subsequently revoked by their respective institutions.

In May 2019, the Beijing Public Security Bureau issued a decision to revoke the older brother’s Beijing hukou, finding that it was obtained through fraudulent means. The property contract was also invalidated in a 2023 retrial, with the court finding that the borrowed-name property purchase contract was invalid because the older brother had obtained Beijing residency through dishonest means, violating public order and good customs.

Conflicting Narratives and Legal Complexity

The case is characterized by fundamentally conflicting narratives from the two brothers. The younger brother claims the older brother was originally named “Pan Tao” and used his identity to attend university, while the older brother insists he has always been Tang Xiangdong and that the allegations stem from his brother’s revenge after losing the property case.

A Wugang Public Security Bureau official told Red Star News that “Tang Xiangdong is ‘Pan Tao’” and that the name was adopted after impersonating someone to attend university. However, the older brother disputes this, pointing to what he says are contradictory household registration records.

The legal saga has generated multiple layers of litigation. The Beijing Second Intermediate Court found in May 2019 that the younger brother used the academic fraud complaint to pressure the older brother into signing an unfavorable property settlement, ruling the agreement was signed under duress. The court ordered the younger brother to return 1.6 million yuan.

Procedural Victory, Substantive Battle

In August 2025, the Hunan High Court overturned Xiangtan University’s original degree revocation decision on procedural grounds, finding that the university failed to provide evidence to the older brother for examination and failed to properly serve the decision. The court ordered the university to make a new decision.

Xiangtan University again revoked the older brother’s undergraduate degree on November 18, 2025, citing the same grounds of identity fraud. In its legal defense, the university argued that the Hunan High Court “only found procedural violations in the old decision, not that the substantive fact of identity fraud was untrue.” The university maintained that existing gaokao records, household registration records, and party statements form a complete evidence chain sufficient to confirm the identity fraud.

The older brother filed a new administrative lawsuit against the second revocation decision in April 2026. The case has been accepted by the court but has not yet been heard, according to the Phoenix News report.

A Broader Pattern of Identity Fraud

This case is part of a broader pattern of academic identity fraud in China’s education system. Before the digitization of personal records and the nationwide student information system, identity fraud in university admissions was possible through forged documents, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s when record-keeping was less rigorous.

The 2020 case of Chen Chunxiu, a rural woman from Shandong whose university admission was stolen 16 years earlier, sparked national outrage and led to a massive investigation that uncovered over 240 cases of identity fraud in Shandong province alone, as China News Service reported. In March 2021, “identity fraud in education” was added to China’s Criminal Law as a standalone crime, making it a criminal offense to impersonate someone else to gain university admission.

Luo Caixia, a victim of identity fraud who became a lawyer, told Beijing News that while the 2021 criminalization “increased the cost for impersonators and reflects the state’s determination to defend the bottom line of educational fairness,” historical cases remain difficult to resolve. “I hope there can be a dedicated department to handle these issues, so victims don’t need to shout loudly to have their problems solved,” she said.

What’s Next

As of August 2026, the brothers remain locked in multiple ongoing lawsuits over both the property and the academic fraud allegations. The older brother’s challenge to the second degree revocation is pending in court, and the case continues to raise fundamental questions about identity verification, academic integrity, and the integrity of China’s household registration system.

The case also underscores the human cost of family disputes that escalate into legal warfare. Once sharing a household, the two brothers now face each other across courtrooms, their relationship fractured by a property dispute that exposed a decades-old secret and dismantled an entire academic and professional career.