A recent controversy has emerged involving the widespread use of names from the "10,000 Common Chinese Names" database on Baidu's Wenku platform. Names such as "Zhang Jiwei" and "Lin Guorui" have been repeatedly copied and pasted across various official and public documents, raising concerns about authenticity.
On December 5, the issue gained further attention when netizens discovered that "Zhang Jiwei" and "Lin Guorui" were among a group of individuals who had collectively registered for the "2023 VICTOR Doubles Tournament Tianjin Station," hosted by the well-known sports brand VICTOR. According to the company's website in October 2023, the event was scheduled to take place at the Yingtu Badminton Stadium in Tianjin's Dongli District. The registration form listed "Zhang Jiwei" as the team leader, along with teammates including "Lin Guorui," "Lin Wenshu," and others—many of whom matched names from the Baidu Wenku database.
Further investigations revealed that the same names appeared in official public notices. For instance, a September 30, 2024, notice titled "2024 Liaoning Non-Public Senior Professional Title Evaluation Results" listed 58 individuals, 48 of whom shared names with entries in the "10,000 Common Chinese Names" database. Similarly, a separate notice from the "Yingkou Science and Technology Enterprise Knowledge Transformation Platform" showed that 38 consecutive names, from "Yang Daxue" to "Chen Bowei," matched the Baidu Wenku list exactly.
The platforms hosting these notices, including the "Liaoning Science and Technology Enterprise Knowledge Transformation Platform" and the "Yingkou Science and Technology Enterprise Knowledge Transformation Platform," are sub-sections of the "National Science and Technology Enterprise Knowledge Transformation Platform," which claims guidance from the Ministry of Science and Technology's evaluation center and other national innovation bodies.
The repeated appearance of these names in unrelated contexts has sparked public debate over the legitimacy of such records and the potential misuse of standardized name databases.
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