A social media fitness influencer in China is under fire this week after she used a fake bib to run at the Chinese Half-Marathon Championships in Sichuan last Sunday. The woman was caught when the fake bib was found to be identical to that of another participant, which resulted in her disqualification and a lifetime ban from the race.
The influencer, Liao Xingxing, was able to start and finish the race without anyone noticing. However, by Tuesday, a video on Chinese TikTok (Douyin) surfaced of her wearing the same bib number as another entrant. The clip showed two runners with the same bib number (C4567), which Liao (in pink) was suspected of “cloning.” To make matters worse, the woman just happened to be an online fitness influencer with 15,000 followers.
In response to the video, Liao explained that she did not win the lottery to get into the race, so she was given the bib by one of her followers. According to a report from China’s VCT News, she had no idea her bib number overlapped with someone else’s, and believes one of her anti-fans tricked her.
A suspicious part of the story is that photos of both runners and their bib numbers were taken, which could support Liao’s argument. Either way, the organizing committee of the Meishan Renshou Half Marathon did not believe Liao’s story, and reacted with harsh punishment, saying they believed she had printed her own bib number. The incident was also reported to the Chinese Athletics Association, which could result in additional punishment.
The Meishan Renshou Half Marathon is China’s first World Athletics Platinum Label half-marathon event, and serves as the country’s national half-marathon championship. Each year, organizers receive more than 150,000 applications to run the race, with less than 10 per cent of runners accepted.
Chinese dad banned from race after letting nine-year-old daughter run marathon
Since the incident, Liao has deactivated her social media accounts and deleted all her videos and comments about the race. She had posted a total of 361 videos on Douyin, which received 219,000 likes, most of them related to running.
In the past few months, there have been several other cases in China where runners used different bib numbers for races and were disciplined for it. At the 2025 Standard Chartered Marathon in Hong Kong, four Chinese runners in the men’s 10K and half-marathon races were stripped of their wins for swapping their bibs, even though it was accidental. All four athletes were connected to the same athlete manager, who distributed the bibs to the wrong athletes.
