In the US-China tussle for the best brains, Beijing cannot afford to rest easy, even on good Pisa test scores

China’s top international test scores belie an education system constrained by rigid exams and political correctness, with very different outcomes geographically. As the US-China rivalry extends to human capital, Beijing must improve the system

Winston Mok

Published: 2:00pm, 7 Jan 2020

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Despite the trade truce, the rivalry between the United States and China is likely to be long term. Key areas of competition include the economy, technology, foreign investment, diplomatic influence and military might. But the most important competition may be for human capital. The US may have the best universities and be a magnet for global talent. But China is poised to win hands down, if the performances of its 15-year-olds are anything to go by.

Last month, the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released its triennial survey of 15-year-olds across the world. China, whose four regions of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang were surveyed, topped the world in mathematics, science and reading. The bottom 10 per cent most disadvantaged students showed better reading skills than the OECD average across 79 economies.

By contrast, in the same reading test, a fifth of American 15-year-olds could not read at the level expected of those much younger. Separately, a US-administered test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has also found that two-thirds of American 15-year-olds were not proficient readers.

China also outperforms the US at both the top and bottom ends in the Pisa survey. In the US, 17 per cent of the students surveyed were top performers in at least one subject (maths, science or reading) while almost 13 per cent showed no proficiency in any subject. For China, only 1 per cent of students are such low achievers while almost half are top performers.

Only Singapore comes close with 43 per cent of top performers. Other than Hong Kong (32 per cent) and Macau (33 per cent), every other OECD economy surveyed had a top-performing rate of under 30 per cent – including South Korea (27 per cent), Japan (23 per cent), Estonia (23 per cent) and Finland (21 per cent).

China’s share of low achievers is a global outlier – when the OECD average is around 13 per cent and many developing countries have more than 30 per cent. China’s success is easy to see but hard to copy.

But the Pisa results should not be taken at face value either.

First, the Chinese regions in the latest Pisa survey are its most literate, and the big improvement came after Zhejiang replaced Guangdong in the survey. For centuries, Zhejiang and Jiangsu were the breeding grounds for China’s top imperial scholars while Beijing and Shanghai are top cities with the best educational resources at all levels. If 15-year-olds from Massachusetts and New Jersey were compared with their peers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the difference between the US and China would be much smaller.

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Moreover, only government schools were surveyed. Private schools for migrant workers’ children, with much lower standards, were excluded. So were expensive international schools, increasingly popular among the most affluent for the more liberal curriculum, where the maths level is unlikely to match that of local schools.

Third, China’s sterling Pisa results were as much the work of overeager parents as the government schools. Chinese parents are known to invest deeply in private tuition for their children to help them keep up with and get ahead of their peers. So, while a bit of self-congratulation is in order, much work lies ahead for China.

First, the quality of China’s primary and secondary school education can be much improved outside its major cities and most literate regions. Not just for places such as Xinjiang and Tibet. Even affluent Guangdong is no match for Zhejiang. The quality of education can be seriously wanting outside the Pearl River Delta.

Importantly, the left-behind children of migrant workers, adding up to tens of millions of children without parental supervision, are usually not well educated. Today’s unaddressed educational gap could become intractable social problems tomorrow.

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Second, the quality of higher education can also be improved. An increasing proportion of China’s youth are university graduates as China makes huge investments into the cultivation of world-class universities. Yet academic promotions remain subject to strict guidelines on political correctness. References to “free thinking” were recently removed from the charters of top varsities such as Fudan University. Can China really expect universities run by party committees to beat Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology one day?

If China’s public education system is truly successful, why do some affluent parents spend up to US$40,000 per year for their children to attend international schools? China’s university entrance examination, the gaokao , is ultra-competitive. Yet a singular pursuit of good results exacts heavy costs from students and their families. Overtrained test takers do not equate effective workers or creative innovators, let alone good citizens. Let us see how China fares in the next Pisa when creative thinking will be assessed.

Has the US-China rivalry come down to a competition between their education systems? Ironically, each side can improve by learning from the other. While American students can use a bit more hard work and discipline, Chinese universities can benefit from greater academic freedom. No matter the extent of China’s lead in Pisa scores, as long as Chinese minds remain closed, China can never match up to US innovation.

Importantly, students should learn cultural intelligence. Indeed, global competence was a key theme in the latest Pisa tests, although the results for the section are yet to be released. In a globalised world, collaboration across cultures is essential to our fortunes – as individuals, companies, nations and the world.

Winston Mok, a private investor, was previously a private equity investor

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: The fight for best brains

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