Chinese Olympic diving champion Zhang Jiaqi has sparked debate after starring in a popular reality show and revealing years of criticism, little emotional support, and financial control from her mother.

The debate intensified Sunday after Zhang’s mother, Xiao Yingjie, read aloud a letter telling her daughter that, despite not having “performed very well,” she still chose to “trust” and “forgive” her. Xiao had written the letter ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where Zhang, then 17, went on to win gold in synchronized diving. Related hashtags later trended on microblogging platform Weibo, drawing tens of millions of views.

The 22-year-old from Beijing retired last year. She now studies sports training at Beijing Sport University and also works as a livestreamer. In late August, she joined the current season of “My Little One,” a reality show that follows female celebrities and their parents at home, inviting guests to provide commentary on family dynamics.

The show revealed that before Zhang retired, all of her earnings, including a prize of 810,000 yuan ($120,000) she had received as a teenager, and three bank cards were managed by her mother.

On “My Little One,” Xiao is seen repeatedly criticizing her daughter, complaining about everything from Zhang letting her cats onto the table to drinking ice water, eating snacks, and leaving the tag on her pajamas. On one occasion, she says to the show’s other guests, “Look how lazy she is.”

Xiao’s private communications to Zhang via the instant messaging platform WeChat — messages critiquing everything from her tone of voice to table manners, as well as forwarded educational videos — were also shown to viewers. Zhang largely responded with silence as they were presented. “It’s so suffocating (to watch),” one highly upvoted comment on the microblogging platform Weibo read. 

The show also revealed that Xiao, despite having no other job commitments, rarely visited Zhang once she left home to attend training at age 6.

On the show, Zhang told Xiao that she often felt that her mother didn’t love her and that her parents were not what she “imagined.” She added that she “always hated” Xiao as a child and that she believed she had been raised not by her but by her diving team.

Popular social media comments labeled Xiao as “NPD,” short for narcissistic personality disorder, a clinical diagnosis that has become an online shorthand in China for controlling, self-centered, or emotionally manipulative people.

One post with nearly 20,000 likes on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, called Zhang a “survivor of criticism-based parenting,” praising her for expressing her dissatisfaction with her mother on the show and actively distancing herself from her mother’s control. Others questioned Zhang’s father for his apparent absence from the conflict.

Domestic psychologist Li Songwei, appearing as a guest on the show, described the conflict as “delayed adolescence” on Xiao’s part. In a Weibo post, Li later urged people not to vilify Xiao, saying she had since voluntarily signed up for courses on parent-child communication and apologized to her daughter for her mistakes.

“This is a typical mother who is blinded by anxiety,” Li wrote. “In fact, the reason young viewers see so many parental traits in Zhang Jiaqi’s mother that they find ‘annoying’ or even ‘infuriating’ is that they, too, are working through issues from their own adolescence. It is a path every family has to take.”

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Zhang Jiaqi (right) and her mother on the show “My Little One.” From Weibo)