Recently, the news of the death of 41-year-old Associate Professor Huang Kai from the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has garnered attention. On August 20, it trended on Weibo. According to sources, Huang Kai died by suicide by falling from a building.
On August 19, multiple netizens posted that Professor Huang Kai had passed away on August 12. A netizen from Beijing revealed that he had rushed from Beijing to Shantou two days ago to bid farewell to Professor Huang Kai and attended a memorial service.
It was reported by informed netizens that Huang Kai had just gotten married on July 25, only to end his life in this manner less than a month after his wedding.
On August 20, the official website of the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology removed Huang Kai’s profile information. An employee of the institute confirmed to Jiemu News that Professor Huang Kai’s memorial service was held in Shantou on August 18.
The report did not disclose the reason for Huang Kai’s death. Some netizens claimed that Huang Kai was among the strongest in credentials among his colleagues hired together but ultimately did not pass a certain assessment, which might have led to his decision to take his own life.
Public records show that Huang Kai graduated from Peking University with a bachelor’s degree and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Canada in 2011, supervised by Nobel laureate John Polanyi (winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986). After graduation, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant researcher at the University of Toronto in Canada and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany. Upon returning to China, he served as an assistant professor and associate professor at the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and was selected as one of the outstanding teachers in the Nan Yue region in 2025.
Many netizens expressed sorrow over Huang Kai’s sudden passing. Some commented that “he was the only one who didn’t pass the assessment, was he targeted?” and “In the end, it’s just about not wanting to pay a high salary, so they terminate someone.” Others opined, “He shouldn’t have come back from Canada in the first place! It’s so hard to go abroad, only to come back and end up like this…” and “Non-promotion means leaving, causing so many young researchers to commit suicide.” Suggestions were made to abolish the practice of non-promotion leading to departure in universities.
In recent years, Chinese universities have seen a rise in intense competition, from the “non-promotion means leaving” policy to “probation assessment”, various talent titles, talent subsidies, annual assessments, and probation assessments, where failure leads to change of position or dismissal. Under high pressure, many young teachers have resorted to drastic measures.
On August 4 of this year, a young teacher from the School of Biological Systems Engineering and Food Science at Zhejiang University, aged only 35, jumped to his death.
On April 2, 2024, 38-year-old Associate Professor Song Kai from Nanjing Forestry University took his own life at home after not passing the first probation assessment at the university.
Previously reported incidents include a 35-year-old doctoral tutor from Zhejiang University who committed suicide by jumping off a building, with the university authorities remaining silent.