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Having gone to school in China I think that the Chinese people not being creative is incorrect. The public US education system is just worse all around. However there are pockets of extremely high quality that exist but aren't indicative of the US as a whole.

What is an advantage however is the US culture which promotes a certain type of courage. In degenerate cases it combines with bad education to become a naive form of arrogance and self indulgance. In the most actualized forms it combines with strong work ethic and refusal to look away from reality to create very big change. (ironically this freedom culture combines best with immigrant mentality)

The Chinese are very creative, except this creativity is often expressed in trivial ways because the culture creates a sense of "fineness" with things. The US culturally has what the Chinese refer to as "the heroe's dream" where everyone imagines themselves the hero. I suspect Chinas large population as well as it's more authoritarian government plays a role. Historically pre-communist era even the "important" things were left to the imperial elite.

My frame of reference is actually the Canadian education system, not the american one. I like to believe we are slightly better than the american's in terms of providing an better baseline education (this might be due to us being "socialist"). I do agree that both Canadian and American education has a lot to learn from China, however I think what you mentioned about courage is a really good point, and I guess maybe thats what I'm getting at. Thanks for the constructive point of view!

I wold find surprising if Chinese people weren't creative; but what I would be curious to know is if that creativity wouldn't be stifled when it goes against the academic establishment, ie: how easy is it for a scientist to propose and pursue a novel theory that goes against the current scientific consensus - and thus, against his or her superiors' theories? Would that be a problem?

> how easy is it for a scientist ...

This is hard everywhere. I'm not sure who said, "knowledge advances one funeral at a time," but I'm sure that it wasn't Confucius.

My doubt is that Chinese businesses will be able to produce competitive products that break new ground with markets outside China.

In a political culture that largely will prevent outsiders from participating in business or non-tech academia inside the country (who will want to live/teach inside China, micromanaged by Big Brother's social score — other than the Chinese?), I think China's heavyhanded political leadership of the future will form an insurmountable obstacle against the country's ability to compete in any/all of tomorrow's critical revolutionary exponential multiplier business spaces — the ones that silicon valley startups excel at, that require dynamic multicultural madhouse environs, and that engender future Googles or Apples. Without the freedom and chaos needed for this space to thrive, China will forever relegate its rising business geniuses to pursue mere optimizations of The Next Big Thing, that will be invented where new ideas are free to run amok.

In the not so distant future, China's cut-rate factories distributors and e-tailers will be automated, like everyone else's, and her political stranglehold on the genesis of new ideas will lead to her uncompetitive downfall. That is, if a billion unemployed don't do it first.

> My doubt is that Chinese businesses will be able to produce competitive products that break new ground with markets outside China.

Thanks to capitalism - they can just buy makers of competitive products. Have you looked at the 2018 Volvo lineup? I think they are fantastic cars.

And yet the hero's dream has indeed produced staggeringly powerful hero's. These outliers tend to be light years ahead of their non-hero peers. The paypal Mafia (Musk, Thiel, etc), Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Brin, Page, Jobs...

The US is a couple of education reforms away from being a hero generating lottery to a hero generating machine. Also the fact that China is pretty much closed to foreign outside heros ever getting a chance.

There are plenty of creative people in china that retain their creativity inspite of the rigid Chinese educational system. Yes, some kids will get beat down into obedience, but China has a lot of people, so some won’t.

The bigger problem is just talent based: china isn’t taking much advantage of non chinese talent, while America is. The American talent pool for top tier talent is simply much larger than china’s despite having a much smaller population.

I hadn't thought about talent pool and very good point. In my mind even if China did want to take advantage of this they may have issues due to their reputation (I for one would not want to live/work in china due to their blatent disrepect for IP).

Follow up: Do those people then get encouraged to continue to foster their creativity within the system? Does the government, upon seeing that someone "withstood" their education change their approach and allow them to continue to explore?

It depends on your company, but creativity isn’t shunned in chinese industry, or even in Chinese PhD programs. Instead, you pay some lip service to some correct thought concepts and you are given wide freedom over the rest of your work, there is a lot of meritocracy allowed. Chinese are also actually quite clever in their subversion.

I would say Japan and Korea are much worse than China, with very restrictive corporate cultures that are actually more Confucian than China.

The natural order of human civilization derides IP. In the absence of a supremely powerful, globe-spanning government, enforcement is impossible. In the presence of honest intellectuals, it is impossible to deny that all progress is gained by standing on the shoulders of giants. Yesterday's Nobel is today's homework. Attempts to embargo knowledge are not just backwards, but thermodynamically futile.

Intellectual property management is archaic. And your other claims are borderline racist.

I am very sorry if I came across that way at all. I have nothing against chinese people, I am talking about the government here. If this style was prevelant in, say Russia, or the USA I would hope I would have the same opinion. I could be wrong about the government, and thats totally fine, but please please do not think I am at all racist.

You seem to have an overly simplistic view of human nature which may have triggered gp's racist alarm. Look back into the history of Western science: plenty of creativity from scientists who grew up in the eras before creativity gained it's current exalted status. Likewise Chinese people won't all turn into automotons just because the Chinese government policy does not maximize their creative potentials.

I have never thought of myself as understanding people well, so thats no surprise. I guess what was interpreted was that I said "Chinese people are not creative", rather than the more moderate "Authoratian governments do not foster creativity as well as Democracies, and this will harm their AI research". I dislike arguments being taken to extremes, and was hoping to gain insight into what other people thought on this topic, instead of being critized for "being borderline racist". Other commentors have succesfully critized my argument, and I love being shown I am wrong. But I expected more from this forum on not taking things too far.

You do not have much life experience outside of the west, or professional experience in China, but you feel some kind of cultural superiority that roused you to suggest that democratic traditions encourage creativity and authoritarian government discourages it.

Your priors are wrong. I work in the US, public and private grants are shrinking year over year, and anti-intellectualism is rampant. Meanwhile my Chinese colleagues, at the same place in their career, are practically local celebrities and receive unprecedented (in the US) resources to do decade longitudinal research and increase headcount. In reality, China is on the bleeding edge in AI because their government and private industry has the social cohesion to focus on scientific advancement. Besides the vast intellectual capital at their disposal, they can cheaply afford to iterate quickly as the means of manufacturing and production are local.

As I cannot reply to squeegee5 comment I'll reply here:

So, because I don't have the right experience I shouldn't voice my opinion, in a way that suggests I am willing to be proven wrong? I never said I was correct, I said this is what I think and wanted to know what others thought. I never claimed to be qualified, I actually implied I wasn't. It seems you have more experience in this area than I, so I learned something from your comments. Again my issue with your comment isn't that you're telling me I'm wrong, its that you are telling me I am racist

Your opinion sounds incredibly racist to gp (and me). And he told you that. So what's the issue?

FYI: it's possible to say racist things unintentionally - i.e. without being racist. I'm not saying that's what you did in this thread: but you shouldn't assume that someone is calling you a racist when they say "[...]your other claims are borderline racist"

I think creativity is the wrong thing to focus on if you are interested in where China may fall short as it largely depends on personal initiative. People are creative despite of their government and society, which all exert conforming pressures wherever you are. If the saying "necessity is the mother of all inventions" rings true at all, people in the developing world certainly face more necessities to be creative.

Where China may fall short is actually when people become overly "creative": authoritarianism conditions people to individually work around rules they don't like instead of working together to change the rules. When rules are ignored you have rampant corruption and heavy pollution despite rules on the book.

S/he is criticizing a culture, not a race. Spurious accusations of racism are so tiring...

Conflating culture with race was, incidentally, a classic rhetorical device used by American South proponents of slavery.

There are certainly elements of jingoism at work here, too.

Wait, do you think culture doesn't describe any objective reality in life? That there aren't any cultural behavioral norms?

I'm trying to figure out what your comment means.

The parent is attempting to 'teach the controversy', by trying to convince others that there -even is- reasonable debate among informed people on this subject (that government policy creates cultural norms, and these norms are suppressed creativity and intellectual conformity). The lie then becomes a kind of half-truth, automagically. These accusations aren't exclusively associated with race (the same was said of the Japanese, Soviets before them, Americans circa 1800s, etc), but that is merely cover when you accuse China of IP theft and the very concept is an intellectually deficient product of trade protectionism.

Deriding culture on the basis of tenuous claims is a deceptive way to evade accusations of racism.

So I cannot critize elements of a goverment style without being racist? I am not saying that "Chinese people are not creative", I am simply saying that I do not thing this style of government fosters creativity. And I am very open to that being wrong, however I would prefer (as other commenters of done well) to be shown counter examples to my belief and provided evidence. Telling my I am being racist for critizing a method of governance, of a county that the article is talking about is absurd.

There are many things that the Chinese government is fantastic at, for example energy. Their transition to green energy has been fantastic for both the industry and the planet as a whole, and I wish other governments would follow their example. If I critized the green energy policy of the American government would I then be anti-USA?

Generalizing and taking arguments to extremes is something I didn't expect on this forum and am dissapointed to have to respond to.

I don't wand to sound snarky, but you take issue with their blatant disrespect for "intelectual property", but not with their blatant disrespect for some basic human rights?

Just citing one example, there are many reasons why I may or may not want to work in China. This one just came to mind first as it was a major reason one of my employers didn't do buisness there. The human rights abuses are a whole different bag of worms that I didn't want to get into here.

Yet we Chinese have less top masters that revolutionize the fields they are in. I, too, believe we have more than enough number of brains to have the leaping happen. It's just the mind and behaviour of combination at individual level being dramatically reduced. And for the a few still hold them, the incentive to keep doing with combination mind and behaviour is simply negative. Hence, at the group level, there are less organically grown mature groups of individuals to provide foundation/platform for those capable and willing to do that. A metaphor I can think of are the soil and the seeds. How people perceive the soil leads to what people's expectations on the issue.

> The latter attribute, creativity, is something I have always thought was necessary to foster with freedom in thought and expression, two things I see incompatible with the authoritarian system currently in place in China.

This is such oft repeated nonsense. Creativity exists in authoritarian systems. Creativity existed during slavery. Creativity existed during the dark ages. It existed during the age of kings. It existed during religious tyranny. It always exists.

> Maybe I'm naive and romantic about the Canadian/Western style of education and China will inevitablly dominate AI through force of will.

What is canadian/western style education? It's so funny how we mock our education system as producing factory drones incapable of thinking but whenever china is mentioned, we pretend like our education system fosters creativity. People constantly regurgitating the trope about "creativity" and "china not having it" just shows how well brainwashed we are. I wonder how the chinese built their own unique civilization if they weren't creative?

> Would be very curious to hear others thoughts on this, perhaps from people further along than I (still a lowly undergrad).

It's a simple matter of wealth. If china can develop enough and get enough money to be able to spend time doing the research, then they will make progress.

It's simply a matter of wealth, people, resources and stability. China has the people obviously. They have stability so far ( I doubt anyone is going to invade them and destabilize them a la opium wars ) and they appear internally stable as far as any can tell. They have a large enough territory. So it's simply a matter of wealth. Can they get wealthy enough to build universities, companies, etc to fund research?

Creativity, research, etc has nothing to do with the political system. The authoritarian soviets were able to send people to space. Nazi germany was able to advance research on everything. So did imperial japan. The authoritarian and tyrannical european colonial powers ravaging most of the world made great contributions to science/knowledge. So did we while we were busy exterminating the natives and enslaving blacks.

The system doesn't matter. People are just as creative in china as they are here. The system doesn't matter. It's a matter of wealth/funding and stability.

Thanks for the reply, I guess we can agree to disagree on some points ha. I tried to keep my answer diplomatic and open to being told I was wrong so glad someone took me up on that :).

In terms of your question on education, I have only experienced Canadian education but I have never thought of it producing "factory drones" , exactly the opposite. Some of the most creative thinking I have seen has been in the classroom, with professors/teachers asking us to point out their flaws, or think of better answers than they presented.

It isn’t that the western education system fosters creativity, they are just less effective in beating it out. In china, you have to compete very hard, you can’t slack off, you must get a good score on the gaokao to assure your future, and don’t fall asleep too much in your patriotic indoctrination classes. In the west, meh, it’s a fact that there is less pressure, and you can even refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance if you want (in the usa, I still find the whole pledge during school thing wrong).

China still has a lot of creative people, but the structural differences of the Chinese education system can’t be ignored, and I cringe whenever politicians say we should have schools more like theirs.

China is not just single block. Chinese education is evolving and experimenting with new things.

Example: Shanghai (25 million people) decided to do something new. They learned from other countries with good PISA results and adopted it to their system. Less tests and more long term projects. Little more autonomy for theaters and better rewards. Their experiment was a success and they reached the same level in PISA studies as Finland and Singapore.

Given China's backwards residency system, you have to exclude people in Shanghai who don't hold Shanghai hukou, so you get around 13 million rather than 25 million. But ya, Shanghai students do really well on the PISA exam, which is one of the things that is promoted a lot.

But I don't see how performance on an exam relates to creativity at all.

I think this has been much relaxed recently. You just need to prove that you live in Shanghai for more than 6 months (rental is okay) and either pay social security taxes or are registered as seeking employment. Thanks to the one child policy, if they don't relax enrollment policy the schools are going to run out of students.

The condition for enrolling in public schools: http://www.shanghai.gov.cn/nw2/nw2314/nw2319/nw12344/u26aw55...

The condition for obtaining residency registration: http://zwdt.sh.gov.cn/zwdtSW/zwdtSW/juzhuzheng/lsjzz.jsp

I think that only applies to middle class chinese with formal resident permits. Migrant workers from the villages, which make up much of that 12 million, still have to leave their kids at home. Anyways, shanghai is a bad example of equitable education.

School enrollment is permitted for those with temporary resident registration (which most everyone should qualify) but requires three year continuous registration, so is still a high bar to cross. Hope to see continued relaxation. They will need the younger generation to fill the schools as fertility rate stays low.

No, not just that, there are now specific rules to place those without hukou ahead of those who have.

e.g. in my area, say kid's dad has hukou in the local area and kid's mum has hukou from another area in Shanghai, then the kid will get lower priority for applying schools in the area comparing to those with one of the parents with hukou in the area and another one without hukou in Shanghai at all. The logic is that the first couple has the option to send their child to a different area in Shanghai while the second one doesn't have such option available to them.

I strongly disagree with your notion.

The results of creativity spreading to the economy can be hampered by the government. But I strongly disagree that creativity and innovation can't flourish under authoritative regime.

Educational system does not create or remove creativity, it's just a common myth. The reason why Chinese students look so mediocre is because they value science and engineering so much. It's seen as a path to good live. The creative people are still there, but there is more mediocrity because there are so many of them.

China: 4.7 million STEM graduates per year = 34 per ten thousand.

US: 0.56 million STEM graduates per year = 17 per ten thousand.

Chinese have adopted market mechanism and Chinese companies compete on global free markets. Government is just coordinating and supporting the industry just like DARPA is doing in the US.

Perhaps I phrased my point wrong. To me critical thinking/creativity and questioning authority are all intertwined. I see those attributes being emphasized very strongly here (in Canada), and from an outsiders point of view, less strongly in China. I actually didn't think that Chinese students were mediocre at all, my intepretation was that China was exceptionally strong in science and engineering due to that social tendency that you mentioned.

>To me critical thinking/creativity and questioning authority are all intertwined.

And I maintain that this is just a story we tell to ourselves. Can you find anything to back it up.

Two reasons for this.

1) Different cultures express same things differently and get same results using different methods. Direct challenge is not the only way.

2) Chinese are not especially obedient or submissive. Regional riots and unrest that you don't see in the news happen regularly. The way people solve their problems with government is very different from the West. Chinese priorities are in getting ahead in their life, not in political activism. If Chinese government fails to deliver economic growth they will have to deal with more rebellious people.

Using Hoftedes research to compare different cultures: China has similar levels of individualism and their long term orientation is similar to Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, but their cultural uncertainty avoidance very low. It's lower than US, Germany South Korea or Japan.

ps. Cultural comparisons in social sciences contain lots of BS but Hoftede's research is relatively solid. His research in IBM is classic. It has limitations but it is useful.

Thanks! I probably have a biased view so maybe I need to step back and look at what other people are saying. I'll look into Hoftede's research when I have the time.

I might also add that maybe there are divisions within Han Chinese culture that Hoftede's research don't get.

Looking from the west China looks like solid block and Han Chinese who make up 92% of the Chinese population look even more so. Chinese government want's to propagate this view of unity. Maybe Beijing and Canton are culturally more like Germany and Britain or like South Korea and Japan.

> this resurfaces my, perhaps mislead, hope that AI will be the field to prove that the Chinese style of eduation will prove unfruitful [...] > > The latter attribute, creativity, is something I have always thought was necessary to foster with freedom in thought and expression, two things I see incompatible with the authoritarian system currently in place in China.

It's always dangerous to believe something based on wishing it were true.

Yes, China is an autocracy, and yes autocracies might hamper scientific and technological development (though there are many counterexamples). It would certainly be very convenient for the West if China's growth faltered because their political system can't do AI.

But China has an impressive record of economic growth over the last 30 years. In a decade it will probably overtake the USA's GDP at current exchange rates to become the world #1 economy; with 4 time's the USA's population, China doesn't need as high GDP/head to have a total GDP much higher than USA. A rich China means they will have plenty of money for education and AI. Chinese people already score higher in IQ tests than westerners. It is quite likely that they will start selecting embryos for intelligence soon, and then there will be a bigger IQ gap -- with more people who're more intelligent, China will have a massive advantage in AI research (as well as everything else).

It strikes me as entirely plausible that China will dominate the world in the 21st century, in AI research as well as economically and militarily.

I’ve never studied in China, but having spent a reasonable amount of time working in a Chinese tech company, I do agree.

It’s not that there wasn’t creativity, but the culture very strongly did not allow for anyone to perform duties or tasks even moderately outside of exactly what they were told to. I think this definitely has and will hold them back.

China still scores near the top of the international maths olympiads. These competitions are designed to force you to require creativity and not just memorise formulas So even if the system doesn't produce high average creativity, it seems to produce high creativity at the top level.