True for liberal arts. The K-12 education in the U.S puts a lot of emphasis on critical writing and research in liberal arts. I see much less rote learning there. And China's education on liberal arts, especially history and economics, resort to a lot of rote learning.

I feel sorry to say this, but there is really not much rote learning of STEM subjects in Chinese K-12. How can you rote learn when you need deep and intuitive understanding of fundamentals to excel in your math exams? That's what my teachers tried hard to instill in us every day. On the contrary, there's a lot of rote learning in that of the US. The reason is simple: students resort to rote learning because it works, and it works only because the problem sets they deal with are so simple and mechanical. That's not the case in China.