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Comment by Akkuma | Hacker News Reader

I think this is overestimating how qualified the coders are in the east compared to their western peers. Everyone I've known from Hong Kong decried the education of mainland China. They said the education comes down to repeating book knowledge, so just memorization, and the inability to handle scenarios not covered by that.

I'll be more concerned once leading technologies that are used by the rest of the world come out of China and not from the US.

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Leading technologies are already coming out of China. I'm not a coder, I'm an EE, but China has GaN and nm process Si fabs, millimeter wave components, 4G radio technology. They have/had the fastest supercomputer, largest radio telescope, manned spaceflight, and some advanced military hardware.

"Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything."[1]

Sounds a lot like Feynman decrying the Brazilian education system in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

[1] http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

> Everyone I've known from Hong Kong decried the education of mainland China.

I'm not surprised such comment came out from someone in Hong Kong but the truth is the education system in Hong Kong is even more "comes down to repeating book knowledge, so just memorization".

Actually, most East Asian education systems have a heavy focus on "book knowledge, so just memorization". Lack of innovation? Just look at Japan.

Disclaimer: I'm from Mainland.

What the GP mentioned is much closer to regional bias/stereotype. In my opinion, it's all about how much alignment a group of people can have while gearing towards making/producing something better. Japan has way more alignment, while everybody else in the crowded Asia is busy with taking a slightly better position and showing off to neighbours. People truly enjoy this kind of feelings.

I don't think most of readers on HN can get and care about mainlanders' feeling of being somewhat offended in this case. So I just chuckled originally. But I hope my comment can supply some context.

Having been educated in America, I'm not so certain this doesn't describe my own experience as well, for the majority of my classes.

Aren't the top 1% chinese students/teachers aware of the problem and can do something about it ?

The top 1% send their kids to the West, and often move themselves as well.

Leading technologies are already coming out of China. I'm not a coder, I'm an EE, but China has GaN and nm Si fabs, millimeter wave components, 4G radio technology. They have/had the fastest supercomputer, largest radio telescope, manned spaceflight, and some advanced military hardware.

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