Student pleads guilty to using fake US degree to get into University of Hong Kong

Magistrate says Li Sixuan’s actions will lead ‘inevitably’ to jail time when the 28-year-old mainland Chinese student is sentenced on May 8

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Defendant Li Sixuan appears at Sha Tin Court on Thursday. She has pleaded guilty to using forged certificates to apply for a place in a postgraduate linguistics programme at HKU. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 4:52pm, 17 Apr 2025Updated: 6:12pm, 17 Apr 2025

A mainland Chinese student who admitted using a fake certificate from a US Ivy League university to get into a top Hong Kong tertiary institution will “inevitably” face jail time, a magistrate has said.

Acting principal magistrate Cheang Kei-hong on Thursday convicted Li Sixuan, 28, of two crimes after she pleaded guilty to obtaining services by deception and possessing a false instrument.

Li was among scores of students caught using fake qualifications to apply for places at the city’s tertiary institutions, including the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in recent years. She was only identified after HKU received complaints in March last year.

According to court documents, the defendant claimed she had a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics from Columbia University and used a false certificate from that institution to apply for the Master of Arts in applied linguistics programme at HKU, where she was accepted in 2022.

She subsequently also submitted false credentials to the Immigration Department to obtain a student visa.

In an internal HKU investigation last year, Columbia University confirmed via email that Li had never graduated from the institution. HKU reported Li to police after she refused to attend a compulsory interview with the university’s administrator.

Later, she was stopped by immigration officers at a checkpoint while attempting to leave the city for mainland China, and told them that she was a graduate of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law’s Wuhan College.