What do a Chinese commencement speaker at Harvard, an actress posting selfies and a trainee doctor at a Beijing hospital have in common?

一个是在哈佛大学毕业典礼上发表演讲的中国留学生，一个是发自拍照的女演员，还有北京一家医院的一名实习医生，这三者有什么共同点？

Not much — except that they’ve all found themselves at the heart of fierce online debates in China about privilege and inequality.

看似没有什么关联，但她们都身陷中国网络上有关特权和不平等的激烈论战。

The three disputes, which have dominated Chinese social media in recent weeks, all featured accusations that the main players had gotten ahead by dirty means, whether that was true or not.

最近几周主宰中国社交媒体的三起热议事件都涉及对当事人通过不光彩的手段获得成功的指控，无论真相究竟如何。

The Harvard graduate faced questions — unfair ones, some say — about how she had gotten into the elite American university; the actress, about how she could afford the flashy jewelry she wore in her selfies; and the doctor, about how she’d obtained her job at the hospital. All three were depicted as having had a leg up because of parents with connections.

那位哈佛毕业生被人质疑她是如何进入美国这所精英大学的，但也有人认为这是无端指责；女演员面临的问题是，她怎么买得起自拍中佩戴的奢华珠宝；而那位医生面临的质疑是她是如何进入那家医院工作的。这三人都被描述为靠父母的关系走捷径的人。

There is no evidence that the Harvard graduate did anything wrong, while Chinese government investigations have found fault in the other two cases. But many commentators, in state-run media and elsewhere, have said that the outcries over all three may share a common root: a sense of resentment and anxiety that in China’s fiercely competitive society, merit may be irrelevant.

没有证据表明那名哈佛毕业生有任何不当行为，不过，中国政府的调查发现另外两人的确存在问题。但包括官媒在内的众多评论指出，针对这三人的强烈不满也许有一个共同的根源，那就是人们对于在竞争激烈的中国社会里，能力可能不如关系重要的怨恨和焦虑。

Such concerns are longstanding, but they have grown more urgent as China’s economy slows and opportunities for upward mobility seem to be disappearing. The government, fearing social unrest, has vowed to address inequality. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has pledged to work for “common prosperity” and crack down on corruption.

虽然这种担忧存在已久，但随着中国经济放缓，向上流动的机会似乎正在消失，这种担忧已变得更加迫切。出于对社会稳定的考虑，政府已放话，将着力解决不平等问题。中国领导人习近平承诺努力实现“共同富裕”，严厉打击腐败。

Still, discontent remains widespread.

尽管如此，不满情绪仍普遍存在。

The outcry around the Harvard student, Jiang Yurong, began with what could have been a moment of national pride. Her speech at Harvard’s graduation ceremony last week was reported to be the first by a Chinese woman. She used it to call for remembering our common humanity in the face of division.

围绕哈佛毕业生蒋雨融的争议，起初本来可以成为一个民族自豪的时刻。她上周在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲据说是中国女性第一次在该校发表毕业致词。她在演讲中呼吁人们在差异面前不要忘记共同的人性。

Some people on Chinese social media did celebrate the speech. But others questioned how Ms. Jiang, who had completed a master’s degree at Harvard Kennedy School, had gotten into the university. They said that only the elite could afford an international education and suggested that she may have relied on family connections.

中国社交媒体上确实有人对她的演讲表示欢迎。但也有些人对蒋雨融是如何进入哈佛的提出质疑，她刚从哈佛大学肯尼迪学院获得了硕士学位。他们说，只有精英阶层才负担得起国际教育的费用，并暗示她可能是靠家庭关系被录取的。

Hashtags about her have been viewed more than 130 million times on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.

在中国社交媒体平台微博上，相关标签的浏览次数已超过1.3亿。

Ms. Jiang, who attended high school in Britain and earned an undergraduate degree from Duke, did not respond to a request for comment. But on Chinese social media, she has defended her academic qualifications. While acknowledging that she was lucky to be able to afford an overseas education, she also said she had saved up for it. According to a post on Harvard’s official news site, she attended high school on a scholarship.

蒋雨融曾在英国读高中，从杜克大学了获得了本科学位，她没有回复记者的置评请求。但她在中国社交媒体上为自己的学历进行了辩护。在承认自己幸运，能负担得起海外教育费用的同时，她也表示钱是自己攒出来的。据哈佛大学官方新闻网站上提供的信息，她读高中时拿了奖学金。

She criticized what she said was the Chinese public’s reflexive bitterness toward successful people.

她批评了其认为中国公众对成功人士本能的愤懑反应。

“At present, many people have been warped by disillusionment with reality,” she wrote online on Tuesday. She added, “Their default logic for looking at things is, ‘This is impossible, you must be privileged, look at how hypocritical you are.’”

“在当下，很多人已经在对现实的幻灭中变形，”她周二在网上写道。还说，他们“看待事情的默认逻辑方式是——‘这不可能，你一定有特权，看吧，你多虚伪’”。

Some commentators see Ms. Jiang as a scapegoat for broader social discontent.

在一些评论者眼里，蒋雨融是社会普遍不满情绪的替罪羊。

“It’s true, these kinds of opportunities are still difficult for ordinary people to find and obtain,” Hu Xijin, a former editor of the Communist Party-controlled tabloid Global Times, wrote in a blog post. He added, “Fairness is the key issue to achieving societal emotional stability.”

“的确，这样的机会对草根阶层百姓来说依然较难发现、获得，”曾在中共控制的小报《环球时报》任总编辑的胡锡进在一篇博文中写道。他还表示：“公平尤其是实现社会情绪平稳的关键事项。”

Mr. Hu said the anger toward Ms. Jiang seemed to build on frustration over the other two online controversies involving perceived privilege.

胡锡进认为，公众对蒋雨融的愤怒似乎源于另外两起涉及特权争议的网络事件的持续发酵。

The first erupted when a doctor at the prestigious China-Japan Friendship Hospital publicly accused her husband, also a doctor there, of cheating on her with other women at the hospital.

第一起争论的起因是一位医生公开指责丈夫——著名的中日友好医院的一位外科医生——与院内多名女性存在不正当关系。

Social media users excoriated her husband, Xiao Fei, who was subsequently found by China’s National Health Commission to have conducted several affairs. The investigation also found that he had left an operating room with a surgical assistant while an anesthetized patient was on the table. The commission did not name the assistant, but Mr. Xiao’s wife had said it was one of the women he was seeing, whom she identified as Dong Xiying.

网友对她的丈夫肖飞大肆鞭挞，后来中国国家卫生健康委员会发现肖飞存在多起婚外情。调查还发现，肖飞曾在一次手术过程中带着手术助手离开手术室，手术台上当时躺着一名已进入麻醉状态的患者。卫健委没有公布该助手的姓名，但肖飞的妻子称此人是肖飞出轨的多名女性之一，并给出其姓名是董袭莹。

Internet users had begun looking into Ms. Dong, a trainee doctor. They noted that her parents were an executive at a state-owned company and a high-ranking university official, and that she had studied economics as an undergraduate. They questioned her medical qualifications.

网友开始对实习医生董袭莹展开人肉搜索。他们发现其父是一家国有企业的高管，母亲是一所高校的领导，她本科读的是经济学专业。他们对她的从医资质提出了质疑。

The health commission found that Ms. Dong had falsified medical school admissions materials and plagiarized her doctoral dissertation. Her diploma and medical license were revoked, and Mr. Xiao was fired from the hospital. Neither could be reached for comment.

卫健委发现，董袭莹伪造了医学院的入学材料，博士学位论文存在抄袭剽窃。她的学位证书和行医执照已被吊销，肖飞也已被医院解聘。记者未能联系到两人置评。

The other online scandal revolved around an 18-year-old actress, Huang Yangtiantian, who had shared photographs of herself wearing elaborate emerald earrings. Social media users determined that they were from a luxury brand and cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. They questioned how Ms. Huang, who is not a major star, could afford them.

另一起网络风波涉及的是18岁的女演员黄杨钿甜，她在网上晒出自己佩戴精美祖母绿耳环的照片。网友认定那副耳环来自一个奢侈品牌，价值百万甚至更高。他们对并非大明星的黄杨钿甜如何买得起耳环提出了质疑。

The internet sleuths learned that her father, Yang Wei, was a former local official who had later gone into private business, and they speculated that he had abused his position.

网探们了解到，黄杨钿甜的父亲杨伟曾是一名地方官员，后来下海经商。网民们推测杨伟可能利用职权谋利。

Mr. Yang denied any corrupt behavior and said his daughter’s earrings were replicas. But an investigation by the local government in Sichuan Province for which he had worked found that he might have engaged in illegal business activities. (Ms. Huang and Mr. Yang did not respond to requests for comment.)

杨伟否认有任何腐败行为，并称女儿的耳环并非正品。但他曾任公务员的四川省地方政府调查发现，他可能参与了非法商业活动。（黄杨钿甜和杨伟均未回复记者的置评请求。）

As each successive scandal has unfolded, the earlier ones have faded from view. Some observers have said that new ones will keep emerging until China’s economic inequality is resolved.

随着一系列丑闻接连爆发，先前的热点事件迅速被新的舆论风暴所取代。有观察人士指出，新的丑闻还会不断涌现，直到中国的经济不平等问题得到根本解决。

Yan Zhihua, a researcher at Nanjing University, wrote in the news outlet Caixin that the public was “psychologically unprepared” for China’s economic slowdown, after so many years of growth and promises that shared prosperity was just around the corner.

南京大学研究员燕志华在新闻网站《财新》上写道，在经历了多年的经济增长、以为共同富裕的承诺很快会实现之后，公众对中国经济放缓“缺少心理准备”。

Now, Mr. Yan wrote, the people are “collectively demanding an accounting.”

现在，人们“纷纷要求相关部门和社会各方兑现诺言”，燕志华写道。